Synchronicity, Coincidence, or God Winking?

by Kenneth Francis (June 2025)

I am not a gambling man and have never, until recently, put a bet on a football team winning a game. But when writer James Delingpole talked on his podcast a few weeks ago to comedian Alistair Williams (two highly intellectual honest guys who seek the Truth), the comedian indicated he had a good feeling about Crystal Palace soccer team winning the FA Cup.

He also spoke about some of the Christian players who prayed before matches. With this in mind, I placed a bet on Palace winning the game (I hope God didn’t mind me gambling!).

Palace, before their FA victory last month, never won the Cup throughout their history. But when Williams spoke about his deep faith in God and the wonderful pious gesture by some of the players (who make the Sign of the Cross before games and when scoring a goal), I got a good feeling and put 25 euro on Palace to win, which they did, beating Manchester City 1-0. Could this have been Divine intervention on a relatively trivial situation with all the pain and suffering in the world? Or could it be that successful sports people with a deep faith perform better?

In the past, James Delingpole spoke with Williams on several occasions, with the former Christian saying he believes that God sometimes “winks,” to let one know he exists and can intervene in a positive way when to reassure someone of His presence and power.

I believe God also winks when someone seeks help while praying. A highly important prayer for Catholics is the Hail Mary. This powerful intermediary plea through Our Lady to Christ, can work miracles. World-famous Irish heart surgeon, the late Dr Maurice Neligan, who died in 2010, told the story of a dying patient he was treating and the power of prayer.

The patient, who was in a coma, with appalling heart/organ conditions, was put onto a ventilator. The family of the patient refused to switch off life-support. They asked Dr Neligan if there was a little church in the hospital where they could say the Rosary. After saying a few decades of the Rosary, the patient woke up, and later left the hospital a healthy person. This pleasantly shocked the team of doctors. It was many years ago, that I heard Dr Neligan telling this story on a radio show as I drove home from work one night to a new house that I believe was given to me by God, when He ‘winked’ a few years earlier.

Back then, my partner and I had raised as much as we could to buy this little house close to the sea. As I sat down in the kitchen in despair, I said to her: “It looks like we’re out of luck. We need 4,000 euro to buy that house and there is no way we can raise that amount.”

A few minutes later, my phone rang. It was my old boss who sold the business a few years ago leading to my redundancy. To my shock and pleasant surprise, he said he had a 4,000 euro cheque for me to collect. I asked him why I was due such a sum, and he told me he secretly bought shares for all the staff before selling the business and it was his way of thanking us by surprising us at a later date.

Comedian Alister Williams tells a similar story. A few years ago, he was in great debt, when he received money in an envelope, posted by an anonymous source who wrote (paraphrase): “God told me you needed this.”

But what about people who pray hard for something and God does not ‘wink’ at them? The Christian apologist, Frank Turak, once told the story of a girl he was infatuated in college, but, despite his many prayers to woo her, she rejected him. At the time, he felt let down by God, until years later he met the woman of his dreams, got married to her and raised a wonderful family. He probably prayed to God thanking Him for not marrying that other girl who rejected him.

In recent times, I’ve often wondered if God ‘winked’ at Donald Trump when the bullet gashed his ear. Before the incident, Trump was never perceived as a religious man, but his Easter message last April was the most Christian message in the history of the American Presidency.

This Holy Week, Christians around the World remember the Crucifixion of God’s Only Begotten Son, our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ and, on Easter Sunday, we celebrate His Glorious Resurrection and proclaim, as Christians have done for nearly 2,000 years, “HE IS RISEN!” Through the pain and sacrifice of Jesus on the Cross, we saw God’s boundless Love and Devotion to all Humanity and, in that moment of His Resurrection, History was forever changed with the Promise of Everlasting Life. As we approach this Joyous Easter Sunday, I want to wish Christians everywhere a Happy and very Blessed Holiday. America is a Nation of Believers. We need God, we want God and, with His help, we will make our Nation Stronger, Safer, Greater, more Prosperous, and more United than ever before. Thank you, and HAPPY EASTER!”

There will be those who will say, “But, but, but…what about his sordid past and the things he said or done?” The key word here is ‘past’. Many of the Old Testament prophets and kings that God chose also had shady pasts but, as God knows what is in one’s heart, they can also change. The ultimate example is St Paul, who used to slaughter Christians, until God ‘winked’ at him on his way to Damascus.

Finally, there exists the phenomenon of synchronicity, a term coined by the psychoanalyst, Carl Jung (1875-1961), who believed in God.

Jung told the following story as an example of a synchronistic event in his book, Synchronicity:

By way of example, I shall mention an incident from my own observation. A young woman I was treating had, at a critical moment, a dream in which she was given a golden scarab. While she was telling me this dream I sat with my back to the closed window. Suddenly I heard a noise behind me, like a gentle tapping. I turned round and saw a flying insect knocking against the window pane from outside. I opened the window and caught the creature in the air as it flew in. It was the nearest analogy to a golden scarab that one finds in our latitudes, a scarabaeoid beetle, the common rose-chafer, which contrary to its usual habits had evidently felt an urge to get into a dark room at this particular moment.

It is unclear whether Jung attributed it as a ‘God winking’ moment, as he never identified what type of entity God is. But the chances of it being a coincidence, are low to zero.

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Kenneth Francis is a Contributing Editor at New English Review. For the past 30 years, he has worked as an editor in various publications, as well as a university lecturer in journalism. He also holds an MA in Theology and is the author of The Little Book of God, Mind, Cosmos and Truth, The Terror of Existence: From Ecclesiastes to Theatre of the Absurd (with Theodore Dalrymple), and Neither Trumpets Nor Violins (with Theodore Dalrymple and Samuel Hux). His most recent books are Theology in Music: How Christian Themes Permeate Classic Songs and Theology in Film: How Christian Themes Permeate Classic Movies.

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