Oscar Coincidences
Five times, I met an angel. His name? Oscar. He’s an angel of cheer. All my meetings with Oscar have been completely coincidental. The common thread amongst all my meetings with Oscar has been that he met me in my low moments and brightened my day with laughter. On my fourth encounter, he told me about Stations of The Cross. As a non-Catholic, I had always wanted to attend it during my undergrad years out of curiosity. Somehow, I always missed it. On my fifth encounter with Oscar, I told him he’s an angel, my angel of cheer. Oscar said I left him blushing. I made a middle aged man blush. An Oscar win for me.
My planned write up for this week was different, but my fifth encounter with Oscar was too much of a coincidence. What’s interesting about Oscar is that he disappears just as he appears. I believe in coincidences. I have also come to believe that there’s nothing coincidental about coincidences. There's a quote I’ve come to believe to be true. It says coincidences are God’s way of remaining anonymous. I’m yet to find who to attribute it to.
On a day I found myself in church coincidentally, I chanced on a sermon about belief. The sermon was on Easter Tide, and touched on doubting Thomas’ disbelief until he saw the resurrected Jesus Christ. A beautiful prompt to finally write on an interesting discovery I made about imagination meeting belief.
If you’ve seen Caravaggio’s painting of The Incredulity of Saint Thomas, you’d see the depiction of Thomas putting his finger in Jesus’ side where He was pierced. But if you read the text where Jesus appeared to the disciples and then to Thomas (John 20), there was no mention of Thomas putting his hand in Jesus’ side. Rather, there was an expression of surprise, and Jesus’ response to Thomas’ surprise.
Sometimes, life’s Oscar winning encounters are purely coincidental. Some things I have chanced upon have turned out to be greater than those I set out looking for. They didn’t always come in the grand. Sometimes, they were simple and still.
Believe that God’s anonymous gifts, grand or small, will light your path in some way, and will come with alignment. I hope you take a chance at life again and allow yourself to enjoy the cheer of Oscar coincidences.
With restful wander, The Yellow Butterfly