No Random Coincidence? Or Wishful Thinking?

A comment on a Catholic Blog about the apparent intervention of God in subtle ways:

I have experienced this in my life in so many ways! I can’t even begin to tell you. One story I’ll share—though my eyes are welling up with tears at this very moment. My first husband died in a hunting accident--during the deer hunt here in Utah, after we had been married 15 years. At his funeral my friend’s daughter played the music to the country western song, “The Dance”.

Anyway, many years later, I was at an outside Jazz concert being held at Deer Valley Resort, when the jazz band said they usually don’t play country western, but they wanted to play this song tonight and proceeded to play “The Dance”. As I looked up to the mountainside, a huge buck watched through the forest at all of us gathered there. I was at that concert with my new husband, we had just gotten married. Any guesses where...right there at that resort looking over that mountainside. To me that was a wonderful message from what is a very thin veil between here and the afterlife. We’ve gone on to have a son who was born on September 2nd, the same birthday as my 1st husband’s nephew—his namesake, Daniel. You’re right, no event, when lived in faith, is random or meaningless.

If Internet accounts are representative, then so much of Christian witness seems to revolve around superstition; and finding meaning in the most tenuous connections.  Surely what this really illustrates is humans' amazing ability to find patterns in things around them, and their fondness to ascribe meaning where there is none.  I presume that this is comforting and that it gives people a sense of purpose, but that does not mean that their assumptions are correct.

But is this really just harmless nonsense?  Maybe it is.  And maybe if it provides people with comfort then who am I to disillusion them?  My concern is that this mindset leads on to other unsound connections and conclusions which may indeed be harmful.  Is it not better to base our decisions and our actions on reality rather than on wishful thinking?