Think Big Ideas About God

I was watching the movie "All the President's Men" (film about Watergate break-in) last night with my family, and this story popped into my memory. It was too good not to share. The following is an illustration by Tim Keller from a sermon titled "Does God Control Everything?" Listen from about 24:00 - 29:00. This story is straight cool. Below is a summary I found of this section from a blog by Andy Naselli. I don't know you Andy, but thanks for typing this up...

1. Tim Keller planted Redeemer Church because he entered a Presbyterian denomination that encouraged church planting.
2. Keller entered that denomination because in his last semester at seminary he took two courses with a professor who convinced him to adopt Presbyterian theology.
3. Keller sat under that professor because at the very last minute the professor arrived at the seminary after having bureaucratic visa problems. (The professor was British.)
4. While that professor was having visa problems, the seminary dean prayed one day about how he didn’t know how they were going to get the professor to arrive, and his prayer partner happened to be a seminary student named Mike Ford.
5. Mike Ford happened to have some clout to get them through the bureaucratic snag because he was the son of Gerald Ford, the sitting President of the United States.
6. Gerald Ford was President of the United States because Richard Nixon resigned.
7. Nixon resigned because a bunch of burglars broke into Watergate and were caught.
8. The burglars were caught because one of them happened to leave a door unlatched to an office they had just bugged, and then a night watchman just happened to walk by and notice the unlatched door.
9. So “if that [burglar] had latched the door,” Keller half jokes, “if that door had been closed just two more inches, we wouldn’t be here tonight. Even Watergate happened for you.”

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I love this story. There are no coincidences in life, though we often attribute many occasions to them. This serves as a reminder to me to think big ideas about God. This sequence of events was so easy for God to orchestrate, yet it still blows my small mind away. Imagine the orchestration it required for each of us to be saved. Every person we encountered, every conversation we had and every feeling involved, which in perfect sequential order the Lord use to bring us to himself; each a miraculous story. Should that be attributed to chance or human effort? It seems only possible that was God chasing after each of us, to write us into His Story.