My daughter is home. She started her freshman year of college at Saitama Prefecture University this past spring, and this is her first time home since.
When she was still a senior in high school, and the Lord seemed to be leading her to SPU, it looked pretty improbable that she would ever make it. The scholastic aptitude test showed her scores to be too low to aim for that school, since most of the students there scored well above her. In fact, we were told she had less than 3% chance of getting in.
pic: Emily when she made it into high school. At that time, Emily's grades were in the range where...well, attending S.P.U. was little more than a dream.
We thought of Elijah who battled the false prophets of baal, of how he filled troughs with water to "make it difficult" for God to answer prayer before praying for fire from Heaven to come consume his sacrifice. We had to wonder if God wasn't going to do an "only God thing" again with Emily and her "less than 3%" difficulty.
It's easier to write about things like this AFTER God has worked providentially and proven Himself: yes, somehow, Emily did make it into S.P.U. My sister Joyce lives just below her, and they keep in touch all week as well as go to church together on weekends (yes, God provided a Baptist Mid-Missions church for her to attend her four years in college).
Emily is in summer vacation now and is enjoying two weeks at home. We took our walk together at 5 a.m.. I started raving about where the prettiest flowers used to be...then realized that was where she used to walk to go to high school, so she knew even better than I did. We finished our walk by visiting the gully--where lots of carp greeted us, including 3 red ones and 2 orange ones! God may not always work the way we think we want Him to, but He never fails to surprise us with far better, does He?
pic: purple lily-of-the-valley-like flower on the "Whispering Path", taken in July. Most of the flowers aren't blooming anymore.
