As I searched through one of the junk drawers in my house, I came across a small brass ball that was threaded on one end. I am not quick to part with something that has remained in the same place for some time, as through squatter’s rights applied to inanimate objects, so I was about to return it to its place and look for something else.
I remembered running across this item numerous times in the last while, feeling it was a part of something important, but nothing came to mind. As I came across this inscrutable object once again, I still couldn‘t imagine what it was and though I was tempted to throw it back in the drawer, I did not.
As I reached to turn on the lamp that stands on my desk to have a better look, I bumped the lamp shade, causing it to wobble. At an earlier point the filial that holds the shade in place had been lost. Once again, it bothered me, because I am really very fond of the lamp and find it disturbing to have a piece missing from it. Soon after the filial first disappeared, I had even made a point of praying that I would find it. That was months or perhaps even a year ago. The only time I thought about the missing lamp piece since then was when, I bumped the lamp and the shade wobbled, as it did now.
This time I was suddenly inspired. I considered that wayward object in my hand wondering if it could possibly be the piece of the puzzle that I had been missing. When I placed the brass ball on the treaded part, on which the shade rested, the pieces fitted together easily. This errant brass ball from my desk drawer was actually the missing lamp shade filial I had looked for and prayed about. It had been sitting only a few feet away from the very spot where it belonged, but I didn’t realize it.
Why had I missed the connection between the threaded brass ball and the missing filial? Something or someone needed to cause both things to enter my mind at the same time so I would compare their attributes. I had made the shade wobble, while thinking about the brass ball in my hand. Other things in life are also like this.
Two things come together to make joint sense of formerly out-of-place things. Some of these situations are small and seemingly inconsequential, except to the person looking for the missing piece, like the filial and the brass ball, or a missing puzzle that you keep overlooking. Sometimes it is something that is more permanently life changing, like two people meeting at the right time and place, and recognizing their compatibility with each other. Sometimes it is the very job that one is suited for coming available exactly when it is most needed or someone giving you the very book you needed to finish researching a significant new project.
People have referred to these answers as merely coincidences, as kismet or as Julia Cameron, in her book The Artist’s Way refers to it, as synchronicity. I believe it is an answer to prayer. God is interested in the things that concern His children. If we believe in Him sufficiently to ask His help, He answers. Unfortunately sometimes we are simply not listening.
ofsmallbeginnings 
