Dr. Roger Pilkington reported an experience of some years earlier when he was in South Wales lecturing to a post-graduate biology course. Unforeseen events forced him to an hotel which was strange to him, where he was greeted by a tired middle-aged receptionist who apologised that only a cold supper was available, but if he came to the office after 9 p.m. she would make him a cup of tea.He did his lecture and then went back for his cup of tea, and she was chatting with two commercial travellers and the subject was, oddly enough, suicide.Thinking him at first to be a medical doctor they asked about various ways of painless suicide.The chat switched to other subjects, and they all retired for the night.
Dr. Pilkington could not sleep:he was wide awake when something like a charge of electricity passed through his body.He flung on a dressing gown, ran down four flights of stairs, went straight to the inner office and confronted the startled receptionist with the question “I want to know why you are going to commit suicide”. He cut short her protests with “I know you mean to do it, but you must tell me why”. The woman broke down and sobbed out her story.
At the age of 43 her father had gone blind – and she was nearing her 43rd birthday: she’d been told the disease was hereditary, and she couldn’t face being a spinster alone and blind: hence her decision. Now she did not know that Dr. Pilkington was a specialist in that very subject, and had already proved that the condition she described was not hereditary.He was able to convince her beyond all doubt that she was not suffering from potential blindness. She confessed “I’ll never think of killing myself now, but since I saw that doctor who first mis-diagnosed my fear I had prayed the same prayer ‘Please God show me how I can kill myself and put an end to it all’.”
Don’t call all such events coincidence.There are too many, and too purposeful.Call them God’s answers to her prayer; not to show her how to kill herself, but how to live.
The whole Bible shouts – GOD ANSWERS PRAYER.
I love the Lord, for he heard my voice; he heard my cry for mercy. Because he turned his ear to me, I will call on him as long as I live Psalm 116:1-2
A Prayer:
I am amazed Lord, at how many coincidences occur, when I pray.
Now read Acts Chapter 12.