Coincidence?

It was likely 2015. I went to a local gym I had frequented for about one and a half years. On the way back from the gym, I stopped at Trader Joe’s. I shopped and then found myself at the register. I reached for my wallet to get my credit card. It wasn’t there.

Turning different shades of red from my forehead to the base of my neck, I told the cashier I had misplaced my wallet.

I went to my car to call the gym. The man who answered said it had not been turned in. Minutes later he said he was just handed the wallet. I was delighted. Once the wallet was picked up, I was again a non-vagrant. I found it fascinating that the wallet was brought to the gym’s desk within minutes of my call, but gave it no further thought.

***

Three years later, in August of 2018, I got home from the gym and noticed I didn’t have my wallet, again. I back tracked to the few places at home where I had just been. No wallet. Then, I scoured my car to no avail.

I called the gym. A man named Robert answered. No wallet had been turned in. I described where I had been in the gym to him. He said he would search those areas. I prayed that it would be found. He called back to tell me that despite his thorough effort no wallet came up.

As my hopes had been considerably dimmed, I went to my computer screen and Googled as necessary. I discovered my longest recovery effort would be the three weeks I would be waiting in line at the DMV. I could not replace my driver’s license without being there.

If I drove to the DMV, I was subject to a large fine for driving without a license. Once there, I would be sleeping in a tent and living on beef jerky. I also wasn’t sure if my blood pressure med would survive the nighttime temperature drop, outdoors.

Additionally there was the matter of all the other vital cards now lost. I needed to make a detailed effort to replace them.

I called my bank to cancel credit cards and was left on hold for what seemed like about three and a half hours. Eventually, I threw up my hands and went online. I cancelled a check I knew was in the wallet.

Then I did something I was certain would take some time. That was cancelling my credit cards and obtaining new cards online. I tried to cancel one credit card. Then I was asked to enter a security code that the bank would text to my cellphone. Just as the icon for the bank’s text appeared, an icon from Robert at the gym surfaced as well. They were side by side.

I called him just seconds before I would have entered the security code and cancelled the card. The wallet had just been turned in.

I have looked back and reflected on both incidents. That call from the gym on the first incident in 2015 was just in the nick of time. In 2018, those two icons at once were like something dreamlike. The timing was so exquisite, particularly in 2018, I can only conclude the two events were in the hands of God, several years apart. To those who give short shrift to the Judeo-Christian phrase hearing God’s voice, I believe the burden of proof is on those who explain this timing from a secular point of view.

The search for truth? It was well put by a theologian and an intellectual giant of the 13^th Century, Thomas Aquinas. “We must love them both, those whose opinions we share and those whose opinions we reject, for both have labored in the search for truth, and both have helped us in finding it.”