From “What Makes You Come Alive: A Spiritual Walk with Howard Thurman” by Lerita Coleman Brown
Young Howard Thurman tossed aside financial and racial obstacles to obtaining a secondary education and moved beyond the oppressive atmosphere of Daytona Beach. At the time, colored children were only permitted to complete the seventh grade, thereby disqualifying them from a high school education, which required eight years of formal classroom learning. But the Black community surrounding him came together to ensure that Thurman’s keen intellect would have room to grow. The principal of his school personally tutored him through his eighth-grade studies and prepared him for the eighth-grade exam. Thurman agreed to work a number of jobs and arranged to stay with cousins in Jacksonville, Florida, so that he could attend Florida Baptist Academy.
Finally, the day young Howard was to board the train to Jacksonville arrived. At the station, he found that his one trunk, strapped together with rope, did not meet railroad regulations for his type of ticket. The trunk would have to be shipped separately, the railroad official informed him, and it would cost three dollars. Howard only had one dollar in his pocket. He sat down and cried. Then Howard heard a deep baritone voice asking him what was wrong. He opened his eyes and saw a large Black man in overalls, work boots, and a large denim cap. Thurman explained that he wanted to travel to Jacksonville so he could obtain a high school education but that he didn’t have enough money to ship his trunk. The man signaled to Thurman to get up and follow him to the ticket office.
This complete stranger paid the remainder of the shipping cost for the trunk so Thurman could leave for high school. Years later, Thurman would dedicate his autobiography to the stranger who helped him. The memory of this moment of divine grace would also motivate him to establish the Howard Thurman Educational Trust. The trust created a scholarship program for students like Thurman so they could gain an education that would lift them out of poverty.
Has a person ever suddenly appeared with exactly what you need? Has a chance encounter or what seemed like happenstance changed your life? Have you ever opened a book to a phrase or word that solves a problem or illuminates what has been obscure? Are crazy coincidences just that – coincidence – or are they proof of God’s intervention?
Walking my own spiritual path, filled with several holy coincidences of its own, I began to suspect that Howard Thurman’s life would help me answer this question. From an early age, Thurman recognized that he was not the guide of his life but an inquisitive explorer on an extraordinary expedition. He frequently felt himself to be the beneficiary of “uncanny coincidences” or “providential accidents.” As he reflected on his life, Thurman found it full of the presence and power of God. He also engaged the Creator by yielding many decisions in prayer, waiting and listening for a “word in my heart.”
Many Christians see God’s hand in everything that happens, saying, “It’s a God thing.” or calling something a “God-wink.” Many of us find it easy to dismiss what they call divine assistance or intervention as simply serendipity or chance. Thurman’s views on divine intervention, however, offer a way out of simplistic claims that God ordains everything, on the one hand, or that everything happens by chance, on the other hand. Peter Eisenstadt, renowned Thurman scholar and biographer, ties the synchronistic occurrence at the train station to Thurman’s notion of God. “Providence would be perhaps too strong a term for Thurman’s belief, luck too weak. It was one of those uncanny linkages between two events, a brief moment when a hidden, benign undergirding and connectedness of the universe is glimpsed. If Thurman’s God was in a live oak tree, God could also be found in a railway station.” There would be other moments in Thurman’s life, too, when an unexpected turn of events heralded a divine Presence. How might his life provide a lens through which to see the Holy working in our own?