Giving Calvinism a ... longer glance

[Dale (evolutionary providentialist)]

The “coincidences” in Maggie’s account were examples of God’s providential (and miraculous) interactions in the sequences of her life… the nurse in grocery checkout line, the bank error in her favor, the offer of a place to stay, the busy loan officer and the president of the bank. Someone (who will remain untagged ) dismisses such events and calls them cognitive bias (or magic), not realizing that God’s ‘technology’ is beyond our grasp.

The Rich Stearns sequence was mentioned in another conversation before, and it also lists miracles of providential timing and placing, but I will include it here again:
 

I think you underestimate the capacity of God, to act not only in individual instances, but in sets or series of otherwise unrelated events that taken one at a time may not seem compelling, but taken collectively impart unmistakable meaning, way beyond believability as mere naturally occurring random ‘coincidences’.

A notable present day example would be that of Rich Stearns and the events that led to his resigning as CEO of Lenox Corporation, maker of high-end dinnerware and other luxurious merchandise, to become the president of World Vision, a large Christian NGO serving to promote the welfare of children around the globe. He elucidates them in his book, The Hole in Our Gospel , winner of the ECPA 2010 Christian Book of the Year Award.

After a nine-month month search, the World Vision board of directors had selected me and offered me the opportunity to become World Vision’s U.S.-based president.

…
I had prayed that God would send someone else to do it-anyone but me. Yet the board (and presumably God) had inexplicably called me…
…
I was sitting in my rather posh corner office one day in 1997 when the phone rang. My good friend Bill Bryce was calling from Massachusetts…
…
Vision’s U.S. president, Bob Seiple had told the board of directors that he wished to leave within the next year and that they should begin the search for a successor. “Wow!” I said. “Now what is World Vision going to do? How do you replace a guy like Bob Seiple?”

Bill paused a moment, then said, “That’s the reason I called.” What he said next was somewhat stunning. He told me that since he first heard of Bob’s decision a couple of weeks earlier, he had been praying that God would lead the right person to take his place. And then he just blurted it out: “Don’t ask me to explain it, but God told me that you are going to be the next president of World Vision.” He went on to say that God didn’t make a habit of speaking to him…

I laughed out loud.
…
About six months after Bill’s “prophecy,” I was again sitting at my desk, this time going through some mail, when I found a handwritten note from one of my Lenox VPs, who worked about twenty minutes down the road, in the collectibles division. The note said:

Rich, I was reading the Wall Street Journal today and looking at the employment section. When I saw this ad, it made me think of you. I have always thought that someday you’d do something like this. So here it is. Didn’t know if you had seen it.
– Bob

P.S. This was kind of a dumb thing to do. Don’t get the wrong idea. You’re a great CEO and we wouldn’t want to lose you!

I turned the page to see a copy of a small ad that read, PRESIDENT, WORLD VISION, and went on to describe the job. I learned much later that the search firm had run the ad just once in the Wall Street, Journal, to cast a wider net and see if any “business types” might see it and apply. I will admit: reading that note sent a bit of a shiver up my spine. Bob had no idea about my conversations with my friend Bill. It was kind of eerie. But I thought I’d have a little fun with Bill, so I picked up the phone and called him.

When he heard what had happened, he was quite excited. “See, I told you so. If that isn’t a message from God, I don’t know what is. Now do you believe me?” I told him I doubted it was any message from God and that it was now in my wastebasket; it was just a crazy coincidence. God would have to speak a little more clearly than that.

It was January 1998, about seven months after Bill’s first call to me, when the next life-changing phone call came. Again, as I sat at my battleship-sized sized desk, my assistant indicated that a recruiter was on the line and asked if I wanted to speak with him.

“Sure,” I said. I always spoke with recruiters, because, well, you never know. The conversation went something like this:

“Hello, Rich. My name is Rob Stevenson, and I have been retained by World Vision’s board to help find their next president. Do you have a few minutes to talk?” The minute he said, “World Vision,” a shiver went down my spine. The series of coincidences were beginning to get a little creepy.

“How did you get my name?” I asked. “Did Bill Bryce put you up to this?”

The recruiter said he didn’t know any Bill Bryce and that he had gotten my name from a donor list.

There are a lot more details about how Stearns resisted and his reflections on scripture and introspections on who he was, but finally he agreed to fly to Seattle to do some more investigation, “a series of fact-finding meetings and discussions before I made a final decision.”

…one more amazing thing that happened – the same day as our flight to Seattle. I had gone to the office early because, months earlier, I had invited an industry colleague who lived in London to visit and tour our Lenox offices. His name was Keith, and he was a wealthy investor who owned one of the prestigious British tableware companies. With so much on my mind, and the flight later that day to Seattle, I was distracted as I showed Keith around Lenox and then brought him back to my office for coffee. That’s when he got up and closed the door, telling me he had a private matter to discuss with me.

With growing amazement I listened as Keith explained that he was planning to buy another large British tableware company and combine the two companies. The new company would be the largest of its kind in the world. And then he dropped the bombshell: he wanted me to join him as CEO. He said that he didn’t want to bother hiring a recruiting firm because he knew that I was the best candidate for the job. I started to speak, but he stopped me and said that I needed to know one more thing: he would make me rich. He said he would offer me 10 percent ownership in this new enterprise, prise, a stake easily worth $25 to $50 million, if I would agree to leave Lenox and serve as his CEO.

As you might imagine, events like this didn’t happen every day in my life. I immediately remembered something Renee had said to me about two months earlier, just as I had begun talking with World Vision. She said she believed that at the moment of decision, a great temptation would be put in my path – a financial lure – that would threaten to prevent me from going to World Vision. Now, remember, just six hours later I was going to be on a plane to Seattle to make my final decision.

I told Keith that I was stunned by his offer but that there was a complication. Even though no one at Lenox was aware of my discussions with World Vision, I decided to share my dilemma with Keith. Without naming the organization, I told him that my wife and I were committed Christians and that over the past few weeks I had been in discussions with a large charitable organization about becoming their president. I said that if I accepted the offer, it would be an opportunity for my wife and me to put our faith into action in a more direct way. And I told him that later that day I was flying out for my final interviews. Then I told him that if it didn’t work out with the charity, I would be incredibly interested in his offer, but I had to finish the process with them first.

Keith seemed a bit taken aback and said that he was amazed that I would actually consider leaving my career at Lenox to work for a charity but that he admired me for considering such a move. And then he told me a story that became a direct message from God to Rich Stearns.

He confided that decades earlier, he and his wife were unable to have children, and they finally adopted a little girl from India. They raised her as their own until very suddenly, they lost her at the age of ten. He never told me how she died. The grief tore them apart, he lost interest in his businesses, nesses, and ultimately he and his wife separated. But then he told me that one day as he was going through his mail, he found an appeal from an organization called World Vision, which invited him to sponsor a child for twenty pounds a month. (I felt that shiver go up my spine again.) With excitement he wrote them a letter explaining the loss of his daughter and asking if it would be possible to sponsor a ten-year-old girl from the same region of India where his daughter had been born. Two weeks later he received a photo of his new “daughter,” and for the next few years, he wrote to her and sent her presents regularly.

“Rich,” he said, “somehow, by sponsoring that little girl, I was finally able to let go of my grief.” Then he told me that the point of his story was that over the years he had become so impressed with this World Vision organization-that it wasn’t easy to help the poor, but that he could see that they had solid experience, a thoughtful strategy, and people with the right skills to do it effectively. “So,” he said, “I can see why a big charity like that might benefit from someone like you, Rich. But selfishly I hope you decide to come work with me.”

Perhaps you can imagine my shock about what had just happened. This could be no coincidence. God was speaking to me through this amazing temptation, saying, Do you see, Rich? Through World Vision I can touch the poorest of the poor, but also the richest of the rich. Are you willing to be open to My will for your life? Somewhat hesitantly I told Keith that it was World Vision who wanted me to be their next U.S. president. The color seemed to drain from his face as we both realized what a bizarre happenstance this was. We ended our meeting, and I promised to call him in a few weeks, after my decision had been made. And then I left for the airport.