I don’t know if I can think of the weirdest coincidence. One notable one was on a Saturday in August 1980. I went on a bus tour from Cork City to West Cork, to the island of Cape Clear. I spent my time seeing the sights while listening to a Hymns by Johnny Cash tape that I had recently purchased.
At the time, I was 18. I spent the previous few years searching for the truth in terms of religion and politics. Politically, I was attracted to communism. Religiously, though I was brought up Roman Catholic, I was chiefly drawn to the Bible and to personal faith in Jesus. Evangelical Christians that I came across in Cork stressed the need to commit your life to Christ. I wanted to do that, but I wondered whether it would work for me. And most of my communist pals were atheists.
Anyway, on the boat out to the island, it started raining. I shared my umbrella with an American couple. We didn’t really speak. They just smiled and said thanks.
That weekend, I chose to commit my life to Christ. I think of it as happening on the Sunday, when I went along to The Upper Room, a little Pentecostal fellowship in Cork. But perhaps it was the Saturday. When I went along to The Upper Room, there were probably about 20 people there. And among them was the American couple that I had shared my umbrella with on the previous day 😀. Perhaps they prayed that the Holy Spirit would give me the final nudge to stop sitting on the fence and commit my life to Christ. The funny thing is that I don’t remember speaking to them on the Sunday night either. I just smiled and said “hi”. I never saw them again. I assume that they were tourists.
Maybe it doesn’t come across as a very weird coincidence, but has certainly stuck in my mind, and it’s still there 46 years later. Some months later, I joined the local Baptist church, but I’ve always had Pentecostal friends. In Cork at that time, among the evangelicals, we had Baptists, Brethren, Pentecostals, and new charismatic groups. We sometimes debated our differences, but we all helped each other in various ways. And I have so many golden memories of that era.
Here are some badly scanned slides that I took on my Cape Clear trip – and a couple of songs from that Johnny Cash album that I listened to:
Hibernia Gospel 
Very exciting read. Thanks for the Johnny Cash music too.
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