The Best Vegas Trip I Never Took

I was raised as a devout Christian, but I lost touch with my faith sometime during college. I suppose that my faith did not maintain the pace of my personal and intellectual growth. The idea of an almighty God just no longer seemed plausible. I kept open the possibility of His existence with a half open mind, but I really wasn't banking on it.

This began to change shortly after college amidst a botched Vegas vacation. Three of my friends and I planned to drive there for a weekend after one of them scored us a free room at the plush Four Seasons hotel through his employee benefits.

With such a nice setup, what could go wrong?

Well, it turns out a lot could go wrong.

First, one of my friends misplaced her driver's license a week before the trip. No big deal; she could bring her passport instead. Next, we learned that we could not rent the Four Seasons room that weekend due to a clerical error. That was unfortunate, but we could just pay to rent a room somewhere else. Subsequently, just a few days before the trip, one of my friend's grandfathers sadly passed away. She obviously chose to stay at home that weekend, which left the remaining three of us. Finally, another of my friends called me the following day to tell me that his grandfather just died, too.

The trip was over at that point.

Random Coincidences?

Seriously?

I tend to view the world through very skeptical, logical lenses. It was this orientation that caused me to doubt the existence of God. However, I could not grasp the inexplicable randomness of the past week's events. One lost driver's license, one clerical error, and two dead grandfathers among four friends within one week? The ubiquitous "Stuff Happens" doctrine rendered any one of those events possible within the course of that week, and the realm of possibility reasonably permits two of them to occur. Three, even. But all four, in separate instances? I simply could not logically reconcile what the rules of mathematical probability would classify as an extremely bizarre coincidence.

I spent a few days grappling with what happened to try and make sense of it. I arrived at two possible conclusions: either four strings of independent coincidences set forth a cosmic chain reaction that culminated in their simultaneous convergence with the random byproduct of canceling our Vegas trip, . Or a controlling factor acted with a purpose to prevent the trip.

As my mother's husband-a good man but never very religious-remarked, "Maybe somebody out there was trying to tell you not to go to Las Vegas that weekend."

A More Logical Explanation

Perhaps he was right, I thought. Maybe the odds of those four simultaneously random occurrences were so improbable that the more logical explanation was divine intervention. I can hardly begin to speculate the potential reason for such an intervention, particularly if it came at the loss of two friends' loved ones. Perhaps God wanted to protect us from a danger on our journey, or maybe to protect someone else from a harm that we would have afflicted. Maybe God intended something completely different. Who knows-maybe part of it was God's desire to extend me an olive branch. I just cannot say, but I held open the possibility of any of the above.

Could it somehow be that the same logical skepticism that turned me away from God was somehow bringing me back to Him? Are there other signs out there, other logical evidence of God?

It turns out such evidence does exist; in fact, after a few years of reading, listening, and reflecting, I have concluded that God is the most logical explanation for our existence. I believe that God was trying to communicate to me and my friends, as I believe he does on a regular basis. We were lucky to understand his message loud and clear that weekend; I can only hope my faith is strong enough to continue hearing him in the future.