Written and Directed by Justin Snyder
A blog.

A Christian Perspective On Providence

Whenever something happens that is way too significant to be a coincidence, I call it an M. Night Shyamalan moment.

If you are familiar with his movies you will understand why.  An M. Night Shyamalan moment is a significant turning point in a story that seems insignificant at the time.  These have also been called “divine appointments”, “happy accidents”, etc.

I have a bad habit of looking too much into these moments.  The fact that I have even coined the term is a little preposterous.  I assume this has something to do with watching too many movies.

Have you ever thought something was an M. Night Shyamalan moment, and then it wasn’t?  Perhaps you thought God was calling you to something, leading you somewhere, bringing you a wife or a husband, a mentor, a partner in crime, a new career, and then nothing came of it. You were rejected. The person was a disappointment. The situation was not what you thought. You didn’t get the job you thought you would get.  You crashed your car and were hospitalized.

Here’s the problem with M. Night Shyamalan moments…

Our expectations are almost always centered around selfishness.

It’s not about having low expectations, it’s about having realistic expectations.  It’s about realizing that it’s not so much about what God is doing around us, but in us. It’s not about what’s going to happen, it’s about what is happening.

These divine appointments, these seemingly significant turning points, they have much less to do with what is happening or going to happen externally, and much more to do with what God is doing in each of us internally.

I have learned that everything does happen for a reason, just never the reason you think. If you are a Christian, what God is doing is sanctifying you, making you more like him. That is his primary interest. And he is sanctifying his church. And he will bring annoying and inconvenient trials into your life, and at times they won’t make any sense.  He will bring small moments that you are sure will open the flood gates, then the flood gates never open.  There’s a reason, just not the reason you expected.