Editor’s note – Every believer who prays has wondered whether anything on the other end is actually listening, or whether answered prayer is just a flattering way to describe coincidence. Zack Duncan walks through a story from his own home – a chance dinner, a new doctor, and odds that run into the millions – and lets the reader decide what’s reasonable to believe. We’re running it because the question he raises matters far beyond one dinner table: what counts as evidence of a God who hears us, and what does it cost to keep explaining Him away?
Miracles, Prayer, and the Skeptic’s Objection
I’ve been writing about the God who performs miracles and answers prayers.
Not only a God who is real, but a personal God who cares about the prayers of His people. That reality is something 48% of Americans affirm from their own personal experience.¹
Of course, many other people do not even believe in the existence of a supernatural realm, let alone a living and relational God who answers prayer.
Here’s a sampling of responses I’ve heard from the skeptical crowd:
- “Just because an event is currently inexplicable doesn’t mean it’s a miracle. It just means it’s an anomaly that our current scientific tools and data aren’t advanced enough to understand yet…”
- “So weird stuff happens, and sometimes there’s no explanation.”
- It’s the “…staggering, complex power of the human brain, not a miracle.”
I don’t think the skeptic is being unreasonable in looking for compelling data to support a miraculous claim. But I believe it is unreasonable to demand strong evidence and then refuse to consider that one might be in error when the evidence demands it.
And that leads me to something I got to see last week.
Depending on your view of the world, it’s a chance to see how God works in the lives of His people…or perhaps to shrug it off as more “weird stuff” for which there can be “no explanation.”
Editor’s note – Notice that the skeptical responses Duncan quotes aren’t really arguments against miracles; they’re commitments to always find a naturalistic explanation, no matter how strained. That’s a worldview decision made in advance, not a conclusion drawn from evidence. Keep that in mind as the story unfolds.
Here’s the Story:
Last week we had some new friends over for dinner.
To be more precise, they weren’t really new friends yet, but they seemed like they would be after we got to know them. They had recently moved to the area and we now attend the same church. After a few false starts trying to find a mutually agreeable date, we settled on Monday, October 12th.
We’ll call these new friends Jim and Jane.
Before settling down for dinner in the dining room we talked with Jim and Jane in the kitchen about how our respective days had gone.
Jane told a story about something that had been an ongoing source of frustration and a recent occasion for prayer.
They had moved to the state a few months back and she had been trying to get established with a new doctor. She was specifically looking for a gynecologist who also specialized in peri-menopause.
Scheduling a medical appointment often proves more challenging than it seems it should be, and this had been no exception in Jane’s case.
But finally, finally, she found the ideal fit with a physician who practiced in a town near our city.
The doctor’s bio on the website looked solid.
She had great patient reviews.
And, critically, she had a specialization in menopause. This was the one!
But actually connecting with the office had proven difficult when Jane had repeatedly tried to call to make an appointment.
That was when prayer and perseverance had become a particular focus.
And earlier that same day, buoyed by prayer and willpower, Jane had repeatedly called the office and had finally made it through.
Success!
She had made the appointment. For those of us who have struggled with engaging the medical system, such a positive ending can sometimes seem like a miniature miracle. The fact that she had recently turned more of her time and energy towards prayer made it feel like even more like a Godsend.
It had been the highlight of her day and the satisfying end of a frustrating saga.
But it was not the end of the story.
The Plot Thickens
My wife Paula spoke up as Jane neared the end of her story.
“Your appointment is with me.”
She said it in such a matter-of-fact way that it didn’t fully register with me at first. I thought that perhaps she was joking.
But no. It was no joke.
She had been following along with the details of the story, knowing there were a very limited number of providers who fit the qualifications Jane was looking for. And when she heard the name of the place where Jane made her appointment, she knew that she could be the only physician who fit the profile.
Jane had just made her hard fought appointment with a medical provider, who, unbeknownst to her, had invited her to dinner weeks before.
Like the other miracles we’ve looked at recently, this is either an incredibly unusual coincidence or it’s divine intervention.
Your answer depends on your worldview and what you consider to be possible.
For a Christian the answer is easy: God is real and He really answers prayer.
Editor’s note – This is the kind of detail that’s easy to wave off individually but hard to dismiss stacked together: the right doctor, the right church, the right night, all converging without anyone arranging it. Scripture doesn’t ask us to prove such moments; it asks us to notice them and give thanks.
One Explanation: God Answers Prayer
This is a case study in how a personal God can go about His work.
Prayer is not wish fulfillment, it is the work of relationship building with the omniscient God of the universe.
Doctor appointments, of course, are made every day. The vast majority of them, presumably, are made without much prayer.
But sometimes it’s in the mundane details of everyday living that we realize our need for God. When we are frustrated or angry or sad or otherwise aware of our need, we turn to Him in prayer.
We acknowledge that He is God and we are not. We tell Him we need His help and we affirm that He is good and trustworthy. And sometimes, as in this case, He may clearly remind us of His perfect sufficiency to meet all our needs.
As this becomes part of our lives, we grow in our awareness of His Presence and gratitude for His grace and goodness towards us.
It’s a central part of the Christian life. As we walk the road of following Jesus, we see that He is Savior and Lord…and He is our friend. And that prayer can be our ongoing conversation with Him.
As Teresa of Avila said, prayer is “an intimate sharing between friends.”²
That’s the view from the Christian end.
What’s the naturalistic explanation?
The Other Explanation: More Coincidence
If it’s not divine intervention, it’s an extraordinary coincidence.
If this story is true (which I can’t prove, but it is), those are the two options. We see in the Bible that seeing coincidence instead of divine intervention has always been a strategy for explaining away the miraculous.
What happened here? Could this be a coincidence?
The answer, of course, is “yes” it certainly could be. But the real question is what is the most reasonable belief.
Despite my negativity towards AI in terms of its impact on humanity (a shoggoth is not your friend), I turned to Google Gemini to see how it would assess the skeptical position.
Editor’s note – We’d rather Duncan had simply done the math himself, but his point stands regardless of whether Gemini’s figures are exact: even cutting the odds down sharply, as his own footnote does, this remains a wildly improbable alignment. The real question isn’t the decimal point. It’s whether an infinitely large universe is a more reasonable explanation than a God who answers prayer.
Here’s the Prompt
I entered the following:
A woman has been trying for some time to schedule with a new OB / GYN after moving to a new city. She is looking for a very particular OB / GYN who is both highly reviewed and has a specialty in peri-menopause. She resolves to pray to God to ask for help in getting an appointment with a new doctor. Finally, she is able to schedule an appointment with a doctor who practices in a nearby town.
In a population of 146,000 adult women, what are the mathematical odds that the woman will find that the physician she has scheduled with goes to the same church of about 350 people?
Further, what are the odds that after scheduling the appointment, but before she knows that she goes to the same church as her new physician, the woman finds herself invited over to dinner at the house of the physician?
And finally, what are the odds that the date of the dinner at her physician’s house is the exact same day that the woman has finally been able to make the appointment?
Here’s the Response (Google Gemini)
The following response is from Gemini:
“To calculate these mathematical odds, we can look at the probabilities based on the population sizes and standard calendar frequencies.
1. Odds of Attending the Same Church
Assuming the new physician is selected from the general area’s adult population, the probability that she happens to attend the same 350-person church out of a regional population of 146,000 adult women is calculated by dividing the church size by the total population:
Probability = 350 / 146,000 = 0.0024%
The mathematical odds are 1 in 417 (or roughly a 0.24% chance).
2. Odds of Being Invited to Dinner (Before Knowing the Connection)
From a strictly mathematical standpoint, the probability of a random person in a city inviting a brand-new resident over for dinner depends on social variables rather than a fixed population formula.
However, since they already belong to the same 350-person church community, they are no longer complete strangers – they share a social network. If an average church member invites 3 unique families or individuals from their congregation over for dinner over the course of a year, the odds of this specific woman being invited by that specific physician in a given year would be approximately 3 in 350, or 1 in 117 (roughly a 0.86% chance).³
3. Odds of the Dinner Falling on the Exact Day the Appointment Was Made
If we look at a standard calendar year (365 days), and assuming the dinner invitation could have fallen randomly on any day of the year, the odds that this social event lands precisely on the exact calendar day she finally secures her appointment is:
Probability = 1 / 365
The mathematical odds are 1 in 365 (or a 0.27% chance).
When you combine all of these independent events together (the church overlap, the blind dinner invitation, and the exact same-day coincidence), the compound odds become astronomically thin – the kind of alignment that many people would attribute directly to an answered prayer rather than mere chance.
This simplifies to an incredibly rare 1 in 17.76 million chance, putting this series of events well into the realm of what most would consider an extraordinary statistical anomaly or a profound personal miracle.”³
What Do You Think?
Is this an extraordinary statistical anomaly?
The Law of Truly Large Numbers says that with a large enough sample size highly improbably events are eventually guaranteed to happen.
This type of thinking relates to the multiverse theory, the idea that the universe is “miraculously” fine-tuned to support life because there are an infinite number of universes and we happen to live in the incredibly fortunate one.
The question, of course, is how often you can call on the Law of Truly Large Numbers before you realize you aren’t objectively looking for a conclusion, but rather have a predetermined conclusion that is searching for a theory to support it.
For the person who has an open mind, this is not about what can be proven. Neither miracle nor coincidence can be proven.
This is about what is most reasonable.
Wrapping Up
The wonderful news about believing in the possibility of miracles is being open to the idea that the world more than a fortuitous cosmic accident.
Instead of mere coincidence, it means the world was made by a Creator God who made people like you and me in His very image. A good God who will one day eradicate evil, redeem all the suffering that continues to exist today, and who will wipe away every tear that has ever been shed.
He is a God who answers prayer. A God who desires relationship with His people. He desires that relationship to such a degree that He entered into His very creation as man, lived the perfect life, and died an unjust death in order for people like you and me to be united with Him again.
If your mind is open today, I pray you turn to Jesus.
Not the Jesus who asks you to have your life together before you come to Him, but the Jesus who showed His love to this satanist.
That is the Jesus who hung out with the prostitutes and tax collectors. The One who said He came not to call the righteous, but sinners, to repentance. The Jesus who is not safe to the fearful and broken parts inside of each of us, but who is nonetheless perfectly loving and good.
That is the Jesus who offers new life to all who turn to Him with a mustard seed of faith.
Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. (Philippians 4:6)
Related
- → Are Miracles Real? (3 strategies from the Bible for maintaining disbelief)
- → Miracle or Coincidence? (what seems more reasonable to you?)
Sources, Notes, and References
- Groundbreaking new research reveals Americans’ beliefs on miracles, prayer: https://religionnews.com/2026/04/23/groundbreaking-new-research-reveals-americans-beliefs-on-miracles-prayer/
- When Prayer Is Hard: St. Teresa of Avila’s Struggle as a Light of Hope: https://carmelite.org/weekly-reflections/when-prayer-is-hard-st-teresa-of-avilas-struggle-as-a-light-of-hope/
- One could argue Gemini’s answer may overstate the odds here. After all, the odds of going to the same church might be far higher than this. If the odds of sharing a church were 4 times higher, that would mean our 1 in 17.6 million event would be more like 1 in 4.45 million. Then again, we should also note that none of this considers other factor as well. What are the odds that this had been a primary focus in prayer for the woman? What are the odds that the woman didn’t recognize the physician from her bio on the website (different hair color!) and actually knew she was going to have dinner with her? What are the odds that the woman even brings this up in conversation on the night in question?
A Word from the Editor
Stories like this one won’t convert a mind that’s already decided miracles can’t happen – no finite number of coincidences will do that. But for those still willing to ask what’s most reasonable, a God who numbers the hairs on our heads and hears the prayers of His people offers a far simpler answer than compounding probabilities ever will. Scripture never promises that every prayer gets answered on our timeline or in the shape we expect, but it does promise a Father who is near to those who call on Him. Philippians 4:6 isn’t a formula for guaranteed outcomes; it’s an invitation into relationship with the One who already knows what we need before we ask. Jane’s appointment is a small story, easily missed. But so was a stable in Bethlehem. God has always preferred working quietly through ordinary details into the lives of ordinary people – which may be the best reason to keep praying, and to keep paying attention.
Salvation – Eternal Life in Less Than 150 Words
Distributed by – BCWorldview.org
Editor Comment: Thank you for showing, through something as ordinary as a doctor's appointment, how vividly God's providence can show up in everyday life.
This article appeared on Medium and is reprinted with modifications and by permission.