I’ve been writing this blog for the past three weeks but I’ve been so laaaaazyyy. It’s long! If you’re bored, or feel like being amused today, read it, I hope it doesn’t take too much of your time.

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I don't believe in coincidences, and I don't believe in luck.

It’s funny when people say ‘good luck’ to me for an exam. It doesn’t make a difference whether I’ve actually been paying attention and attending class all semester, or that I’ve been skipping every possible lecture (I haven’t!), …they all say the same thing. Considering that I’d stayed up until 4am that day and managed only 2 hrs sleep before the exam JUST to learn the material, I probably do need luck, but ‘goodluck’ doesn’t mean anything to me. It’s equivalent to something like, ‘what’s up?’; a well-meaning phrase that I never take literally.

Back in high school, a bunch of us would always have a similar conversation before an exam.

‘GOODLUCK!’
‘I don’t believe in luck!’
‘I wish you not suck!’

For us, it was just a lame, funny ‘ritual’ because of our belief in something more than just chance. I refuse to believe that everything in this world was thrown together at random, and that you only meet people today simply because you happened to BE there and your friendship is fleeting, fickle and meaningless.

This year, I’ve been increasingly aware of how nothing is coincidence. As I began to recognise seemingly chance encounters as something ‘ordained’, more and more of these encounters seemed to occur! If not coincidence, if not luck or chance, could it really be fate? An omnipotent hand controlling my life?

I have a few stories I want to share about this.

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In March this year, university had just begun and Celine and I were still getting familiar with the amazing Hillsbus transport system to go home. She’s my twin sister and we go to different universities.

On the bus with Viennci one day, I got a call from Celine.

“Hello?”
But Celine immediately hung up.

For the life of me I cannot remember why I looked out the window. Previously, I was sitting at the window seat and facing towards the aisle and talking to Viennci. But at the moment I turned, I saw Celine standing right outside my window on the side of the road watching our bus drive away. I called her back and she wanted to get on the bus, so I asked the nice lady bus driver to wait at the next bus stop while Celine ran 200m and boarded the bus.

Was it luck? Or could I possibly be that I am suggesting that I believe in a God who cares enough so that Celine doesn’t have to wait and extra 15-30 minutes for the next bus?


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I finished my lecture one Monday and headed off to lunch with friends. Intending to buy a heart shaped cup as a present for Naomi, I stopped over at Morning Glory. I had $16.40 in my wallet. The cup was $13.95 and I needed $3.10 for the bus fare home. I asked my friend for 55c, and after I bought the cup, we said our goodbyes and I headed to my bus stop.

If you bothered to do the math (because obviously, I had failed to), I still needed an extra 10c to actually get home. I started to panic when I realised, until suddenly, it didn’t worry me anymore. I KNEW in my heart that God had given me this sense of peace.

If you don't agree with me, that’s okay! I don’t expect you to; I’m just sharing what I believe. So before you gag, let me continue. I knew there were three likely solutions to my problem:

1. Celine would be there and she could help me. But I knew for a fact that she always takes the 4.10pm bus on Mondays, and it was 2.45pm.
2. I’d ‘coincidentally’ meet a friend in the time I was walking towards the bus stop and they’d lend me 10c.
3. Or, the bus driver would be super nice and let me on the bus! (it’s only ten cents)

When the bus came, I showed the driver my $3.00 and my sadface :(. He said, ‘Don’t worry about it’ and let me on the bus. But as I turned towards the aisle, I heard a familiar voice say, “Hi Charlotte”.

… It was Celine.

“Hey Celine! Can I borrow ten cents?”

In the end, ALL THREE of the likely solutions actually came true.

Only two days later, I was rushing to catch my bus YET AGAIN after meeting Erica. I stood waiting diagonal to my bus stop at the traffic lights intersection, staring as the last few people boarded my bus. The green walking man let me cross, but I still needed to pass another green light to reach my bus!

I started to spam pressing the cross button, ‘GOGOGO STUPID LIGHTS’…

I watched the bus doors close, but suddenly, I had felt that same sense of calm. I knew that God always does things for our good… I crossed the road and knocked at the bus’ closed doors. The bus driver shook his head at me, and drove off.

WHAT AN ANTI-CLIMAX.

I could feel anger bubbling inside of me, and suddenly, again, I remembered that God is good. What could He possibly achieve with me waiting half an hour for my next bus? I walked aimlessly around at the shops close by. I was bored, and finally returned to the bus stop.

…and there she was… Celine was at the bus stop!

It’s not even funny anymore, LOL, it's kind of scary. I see her WAY too much.

We boarded the bus, and as I was telling her what had just happened, I watched my primary school, church, and old high school friend, Bonnie get on the bus. I hadn’t talked to her properly for four years, and now I had an hour’s bus ride to catch up with her!

Could it really be that the God of the universe cared for this much about me? Something as small as a bus ride, or as big as meeting an old friend…? Would it be easier to believe that it really was just a coincidence, or some weird twin intuition?

If it’s easier to believe that it’s easy for me to meet Celine on the bus because we live together, then don’t worry, she doesn’t appear in the next story ;)

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I was having a really bad day a few weeks ago. I was angry, raging, and NOT fun to be around. I calmed down before I went to bed that night. Waking up for uni the next day, I planned to take the 8.55am bus that that was only a 5 minute walk from my house. At 8.50am in my room, I was about to run downstairs when I realised I’d forgotten to put my contact lenses in. How annoying, I wouldn’t be able to make the bus, and now had to wait 40 minutes for the next one. I’m sure everyone can relate to wishing you could’ve had that extra 40 minutes to sleep, instead of JUST missing yet another bus.

Mum found me sitting there with nothing do. ‘Oh you’re still here? Come talk to me then’.

She knew I had been upset the previous day and wanted to talk to me about it. It wasn’t a very long conversation, but we concluded that God has really provided for me. I knew that He was working in the situation, no matter how angry I was. Cheered up, I left the house half-skipping, smiling and humming a song I didn’t know the lyrics to, or the name of. (LOL that’s how I walk to the bus stop, don’t judge me >:|).

When I stepped onto the bus, the driver told me, “We’ll be stopping 2 streets down and I’m transferring all the passengers to another bus. The previous one was running late, so that driver’s just waiting for us there.”

As I found a seat, I wondered a few things. What if I remembered to put my contacts in that morning? I would’ve left the house on time. I wouldn’t have had that encouraging conversation with my mum, and I would’ve waited alone in the cold for the bus that came late…

And while pondering this, I scanned through the MercyMe album on my phone’s mp3 player, trying to find that mystery song I was humming. It started to bore me listening to the intros of every song twice through, and I couldn’t find the song in my other albums either. I decided, ‘if He wants to, God’s going to let me listen to this song later. I’ll just put my songs on shuffle’.

I did exactly that. I put my playlist on shuffle, and half listened to the first song, got bored, and then clicked next.
The intro didn’t sound familiar at all, but the chords started to sound kind of like that song I was humming…

And I realised it was.

Grace tells another story – MercyMe.

Inside, I knew that God would let me listen to the song. But so immediately? Could that be a coincidence?

Seriously, it’s just a song, but to me it shows that there is Someone caring for me.

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Two weeks ago, I was sitting at PepperLunch with Martin. For some reason we started talking about Viennci. We were talking about how we liked her blunt honesty.

Martin: 'Hey, when Viennci calls, does she say 'BYE', and hang up really abruptly?'
Me: 'Yea, haha! It's really funny -'

I was interrupted by my phone vibrating on the table.

'Oh, wow. It's Viennci calling...'

I picked up the phone. 'Hello?'
'Hey Charlotte! I'm watching the movie that Martin linked us to, Human Centipede! Don't you think it's really disgusting?'
'Yea, it's really gross..'
'Anyway, I have to go now! BYE!'

When I told Martin, we both looked up at the sky and said, 'wow, thanks God...'


Maybe you’re laughing at the weirdness of these stories. But these ‘coincidences’ keep happening again and again, ones that mean so much more than just getting on a bus, or a phone call.

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My Christian Bible Study at UTS encouraged us to invite our friends to ‘Think Week’ – we just have an hour of discussion with the SmallGroup about basically anything anyone wants to talk about; what people think of the existence of God is, what the definition of faith is to you, justice, evolution, the Big Bang Theory.. just whatever you wanted to talk about.

Two weeks prior to Think Week, I asked my friend to come (let’s call him Jtdh, for anonymity’s sake), but he said that he had a lecture during that time. Fair enough. I didn’t think much of it at all afterward.

On the day though, while walking into uni, I realised a few things; that though I had neglected to pray about my friend, or about Think Week… God works so beyond my prayers. I knew it was going to be a good day. We’d have a good hour of discussion with whoever ends up coming, even if my friend couldn’t make it. I headed towards the bathrooms, lol, because I needed to go. There was a line, and one of the cubicles were dirty, and I couldn’t be bothered to stand in the line so I stood at the sinks, and then someone came in and took my spot and… I couldn’t wait anymore LOL, so I walked out to the other side of the uni building in search of bathrooms :D.

So I found the bathrooms, entered and exited with no problems this time and started to walk towards where my SmallGroup normally meets. There were many people walking past and I almost literally bumped into my friend, Jtdh.

‘Jtdh! What are you doing here?’
‘I’m about to skip my lecture and study in the library. What about you?’
“Ohh, I’m just meeting my bible study and about to…wait… you’re skipping? COME!’

After a long time of persuasion, then ‘well, okay, if you don’t want to come… don’t…’, he said he’d walk me down to my SmallGroups and leave.

Before he left though, I asked, ‘don’t you want to say hi to my friends?’

Long story short, Jtdh ended up sitting down and said he actually enjoyed himself with the discussion. We talked about evolution, and what we thought of it. And everyone was really open to discuss about what they thought about faith, etc. We didn’t come to any conclusion or anything, it was just free time to d&m about whatever.

That night, I thought, what if I hadn't drunk so much water that morning? LOL. Or, what if the bathrooms weren't so dirty?

Was this really just chance?

I’m not saying that it was some life changing discussion and I successfully reeled a friend into becoming a Christian, or anything! All that happened was that my friend got to listen about some things that I believe very strongly in, and he enjoyed it, and I’m happy. He was the only visitor to my SmallGroup that day, and they ended up giving him a Bible as a gift.

I don’t believe that it was chance. I believe that with each misfortune or mishap in our lives, God has planned something wonderful for each of us. And though it is not always immediate, and though we might have to wait a day, maybe two, or maybe 20 or 50 years, I KNOW He’s caring. I don’t mind waiting.

When I post this blog though, I’m not trying to smack you in the face with my stories and scream ‘BELIEVE IT!’. If you don’t believe me, that’s fine! If you do, but don’t care, that’s fine too. I’m just sharing. I have PLENTY more of these stories - about how with waiting, everything else seems to fit in place. But this entry is longer than 2000 words already, maybe some other time ;)