RABBIT TRAILS OR DIVINE SERENDIPITY?

Sometimes a discussion or a relationship or even my entire day can go off on a erratic tangent making lots of crazy, meaningless turns. It's hard to tell where I'm going, and wherever I find myself, I don't know how I got there. It feel as if I've been "going down a rabbit trail." 

If you've ever seen a dog chase a wild rabbit in a field or in someone's back yard, you'd understand where this idiom comes from. The dog pursues the hare in vain as it scurries under bushes, runs through briers, hops over brush piles, into ditches and out of them without any pre-planning of its route. Rabbit trails in my life experience have come to mean running haphazardly through my day as if I'm being chased. 

There is a positive alternative to what may seem like senseless digression. Sometimes I've deliberately taken the risk to explore a side path and found an interesting adventure or come upon an unexpected breathtaking scene. That's more like intentionally taking the road less traveled, a literary reference to a poem by Robert Frost, "The Road Not Taken." It is a better option than just running around helter-skelter in rabbit trails. But there is more.

Digging still deeper for a flip side choice to a rabbit trail life, I came upon the word serendipity which on the surface may still appear to be happenstance. But that is deceiving. It is very controlled but not by me, nor is it by random chance. Serendipity is defined as “the unexpected occurrence and development of events in a happy or beneficial way.” With a surprising outcome, something wonderful happens that I had not even been seeking.

Serendipitous as an adjective implies not accidentally but as a God-shaped event, being in the right place at the right time. For instance, bumping into a good friend in some unusual location just when I needed help. Or someone sending me an exact amount of money without knowing my need. Or when you meet the person who becomes your spouse because of the seating arrangement the college professor declared would be permanent for the entire semester (my true story!)—these are examples of serendipitous events. I couldn't plan such things so precisely if I tried. living a serendipitous life is like flowing along in a river within a positive current that had been planned to bring me to my happy destiny.

I believe in Divine serendipity. That's how I want to live my life. There is room in my life for wise planning, of course, but I don't want to negotiate my life by my flawed self-control. I would be blind to my real needs and desires and still inclined toward running meaningless rabbit trails.

Serendipity is finding something valuable or delightful when you are not looking for it. In information technology, serendipity often plays a part in the recognition of a new product need or in solving a design problem. In ordinary, everyday routine living, serendipity may express itself in the ordering of small details like who to visit on the way home from a book promotional tour (my true story!) which led even to a major paradigm shift in my life direction.

Are we getting closer to understanding Divine serendipity? It is like an ordered godsend you didn't ask for or expect; a distinct happening that is recognizable in retrospect. Serendipities are the moments in life you never expect will happen but are so glad when they do. At times it comes down to sheer, out-of-my-hands perfect timing, seemingly total coincidence, but it is indisputably the extraordinary, generous blessing planned by God for us.

The way many of us lead our lives – over planning, overbooking, developing hard lists of goals and objectives, cramming our schedules full, placing so much importance on being always busy, scarcely glancing up from our ever more advanced communications devices – is tragically shrinking our chances of encountering Divine serendipity. We are missing one of the best parts of life. We box in God by our lack of expectations. All the while He wants to generously work on our behalf outside the confining box we have made for ourselves.

Deep inside don't we all feel a desperate need to be more open to the wonders we have inadvertently closed ourselves off to due to having booked our calendar full without leaving any room for the flow of leisurely serendipity in our lives? God has endowed us with free will. We can choose to spend our lives running rabbit trails, if we wish.

Luck and Divine serendipity are very different. Luck is random good fortune, if there is even such a thing as luck. Serendipity is finding something wonderful that I didn’t know I was looking for or needed, but God had it on His agenda for me from the beginning. I could miss it. If I deliberately surrender myself totally to the will of God, I allow Him to put all His serendipity ducks in a row for me to bring me to the right place at the right time in His perfect plan.

A casual lunch engagement might surprise me with an unfolding relationship with someone I have just met who turns out to be a soul mate as time goes on. I might have been walking through "an ordinary field" one day and found "a treasure." An offhand comment by someone may lead me to a window of opportunity of which I never dreamt. 

Holy Spirit serendipity arranges circumstances behind the scenes, opens doors, gives incredible life abundant pleasure to me, brings balm to heal my hurts, wisdom to my life—or draws me into the orbit of someone else who needs my encouragement or help. When such Divine serendipity occurs, in retrospect I know from Whom it comes—it is not by chance or by my self-planning. And I thank Him to Whom credit is due.

The anticipation of daily Divine serendipity is what wakes me in the morning to enthusiastically and expectantly ask, “What have You planned for us to do today, Lord? I want to give You pleasure and I am ready to receive Your serendipity blessings. Keep me from the rabbit trails of my self-will.”  

Then I put my feet on the floor and prepare to watch Him work out my multi-trailed day in His Divine serendipity way!