Coincidence - Rev. Don Rose

There is a phrase in Divine Providence which may apply when some striking coincidence causes us to wonder. The phrase is: "when they see events in some wonderful series" (187).

Sometimes when we return home after an eventful day we recount in an animated tone the remarkable things that have happened. In the Biblical story of Joseph and his brothers we see the brothers returning to their father with wondrous things to recount. They told "all that had happened to them" (Genesis 42:29). It is at this point that the Arcana Coelestia talks about our ascribing events either to Providence or to chance.

"'And told him all that had befallen them' . . . . That the things which befell them are things of providence or things provided is because everything that befalls or happens, which in other words is called accidental and is ascribed to chance or fortune, is of providence" (Swedenborg, Secrets of Heaven 5508).

We see events in some wonderful series, but we are free to think of this as we wish. The passage continues. "The Divine Providence works thus invisibly and incomprehensibly in order that man may in freedom ascribe an event either to providence or to chance."

"All who receive influx from heaven and acknowledge the Divine Providence, and especially those who by reformation have become spiritual, when they see events in some wonderful series see as it were the Divine Providence by interior acknowledgment, and confess it" (Swedenborg, Divine Providence 187).