9. Spiritual Prevision
CHAPTER NINE
SPIRITUAL PREVISION
IN DECEMBER 1924 I received a letter from my mother saying that she was facing the possibility on undergoing a surgical operation. It was discovered that she had a tumor and there was a choice before her: radiology treatments over quite a long period of time, or surgery. She was inclined toward surgery as being less drawn out—to get it over with instead of making the many long trips to town which the radiology would necessitate. I had not heard definitely what her decision had been when a telegram arrived saying she was with the Lord. She had chosen surgery and had died in the hospital following the operation. Father wired me lovingly, but said the funeral would be over before I could reach home, so I should not try to come.
This was a shattering blow to me. My mother had opposed my going to the foreign field because of her clinging love for me, her only daughter. In the agony of her pleadings with me she had said some bitter things which at the time I had not taken to heart, as I recognized they were the upflinging of violent emotion and not the result of considered thought. But one word had been: “You are praying to go to China, and God answers prayer, but you will go only over my dead body.” Of course, that memory now came back to me and simply lacerated my heart.
I owe a great deal to my mother. With her deep affections she held high ideals and was very conscientious. She sacrificed her musical career and many opportunities for a musical evening with other young people in order to baby-sit with her two children at home. She married young and was still in her twenties when my brother and I were born. She had great ambitions for her children and carefully watched over us. We were never allowed to run the streets. She gave up her evenings to reading to us and planning to make home a pleasant place where our friends were welcome. She was a Christian, at one time a consecrated Christian, and always trained us to love the Lord and honor His Word. As we grew older she wanted us “to move in good society,” and this was the temptation which had led her to compromise with worldly things. But at the root of it was her natural love for us.
I took my mother’s love for granted, accepting the warmth of the daily sunshine in such careless security that I had not shown her the gratitude which was her due. All these things came back to me now that she was gone, but it was too late to express my thanks to her and my heart was sorely torn.
During that Christmas vacation I took employment as a waitress in a restaurant. School reopened in January.
One day in class a messenger went up to the platform and handed the teacher a note. He read it and said: “Will Miss Isobel Miller please go to the office of the Dean of Women? There is a telegram for you.”
Astounded and wondering, I got up and sped toward the Women’s Building. What could it be? I was trembling by the time I reached the office, and from the Dean’s face I knew it was bad news of some kind. I could only look at her in agony and beg that she tell me quickly and not prolong suspense. She did so, “Sit down, dear. The telegram reads: FATHER CRITICALLY INJURED IN ELEVATOR ACCIDENT. COME HOME AT ONCE. MURRAY. Who is Murray?”
“My brother,” I choked. “Oh, but I can’t stand it. Father too! Oh——!”
“Is there anyone we can call to help you, dear?” she asked tenderly.
Suddenly in imagination I was far away, sitting on a seaside beach beside a tall, strong man who was looking out over the breaking sea with brooding eyes, and he was saying, “Satan may try to get you away from the Institute. Is there anyone you know who can be depended on for godly, unprejudiced judgment?” In a flash I recognized that Mr. Fraser’s foresight had been an exact premonition in all except one detail. He had thought it would be Mother, but it turned out to be my brother who summoned me home. The memory of Mr. Fraser’s advice steadied and quieted me.
Sitting up straight, I said, “Yes, please. I would like Dr. Isaac Page to come and help me.”
The dean was relieved to be able to do something, and in a moment she was talking to him on the telephone. I heard him say, “I’ll take a taxi and be there immediately.” I waited in the dean’s office until he arrived—my father’s intimate friend.
“Daddy Page,” I said, “Mr. Fraser told me this might happen. He also told me what to do if it did happen. I will go and pack my trunk, but will you please do two things for me? Reserve a ticket for the train tonight, but don’t buy it yet. Will you please wire immediately to Mr. Charles Thomson and ask if Dad is as bad as Murray said?”
“Excellent idea, Isobel,” said Dr. Page. “First reports of these accidents are often excited and exaggerated. Mr. Thomson will know. I will go and do that immediately—there is no train going to Vancouver until this evening, anyway. And you? You will trust and not be afraid?”
“Yes,” I said, much calmer now that a plan of activity was under way. “Thank you. Everyone here is so kind and loving to me. I will be all right.”
“I’ll come back just as soon as I have wired and made the train reservation,” he said, and was gone.
Before supper that evening the answering telegram arrived. It read: FATHER IMPROVING SENDS LOVE AND SAYS STAY AT YOUR POST. WRITING THOMSON.
Oh, what a relief! The letter that followed told how the elevator girl had lost control and the cage had crashed four stories to the cement basement. Daddy was injured internally and the jar began a trouble which did finally take his life, but he lived for nearly twenty happy years before that took place!
“He that is spiritual judgeth all things” (I Cor. 2:15).
How did Mr. Fraser know this might happen? When God’s child is living close to Him and perfectly yielded to His Will, it is possible to spread his mind out in the Lord’s presence and catch the instruction of God, especially if interceding for someone else. If there were no God this could not be. Satan can read man’s thought and describe the past; he can use intelligence and guess at the future, but he cannot know the future.
This experience was followed closely by another special instance of the Spirit’s operation.
The Otis Whipple family were no longer in Seattle, but in China. Mr. Whipple, a fine architect, had been called to build a missionary hospital in one of the big inland cities. He took his family with him, so it was some time before Mrs. Whipple heard of my sorrows.
One day I received a letter from her. It said something like this. “Isobel, I feel your mother was spiritually prepared to go home. It was very strange. I knew nothing of the possibility of her operation, let alone her danger, but on the day of her death I was so burdened for her that I spent a long time in prayer and had assurance that she was at last yielded to God’s will in all things.
“But now as I write I have another burden that presses upon me. It is for you, and somehow connected with your father. I am in much prayer for you, dear, and for him. I do not know what is happening, but God has called me today to intercede for you both, and claim only His will to be done upon each of you.”
I looked at the date of Mrs. Whipple’s letter. It was the very day the telegram came telling of Father’s accident. Mrs. Whipple was in inland China, halfway around the world, with no human knowledge whatever of what had taken place. She could not possibly have known, for I did not learn it myself for several months, that before she went to the hospital Mother admitted that I had chosen the better course in pursuing the will of God. What had been worldly ambition in her life she confessed to Him and before she died she came back to her earlier consecration of all to the Lord. And who knows how much Mrs. Whipple’s intercession helped to win that battle?
I was deeply impressed, wistfully wondering if I would ever attain to the place where God could trust me with His counsels in this way. I did not know that God has these gifts in greater or less measure for all who are born again of the Spirit and living in obedience to that Holy Spirit. I was soon to learn.
Joy at Father’s recovery was quickly followed by a new anxiety. Mother had been the business head in the family and it was she who had managed to make ends meet, and who had planned so carefully that I was able to get an education. Father was of Micawber’s optimistic and gullible temperament. He was always going to “strike it rich” by investment in copper, silver, or gold mines, or some such venture. The fact that he had consistently lost all his life savings in these “promising” stocks never seemed to teach him. After Mother’s death I was perturbed to hear that Father had given up his profession and had gone in for stock-selling—this time a new invention which would make us all millionaires in a short time! Brother, too, had sold his chicken ranch, and apparently was not working at anything. Why start something new if you are going to be independently wealthy soon? They rented a little bungalow in North Vancouver, sold some of our furniture, and moved the rest in. These cheerful, wonderful-sounding letters only served to burden me: the higher Daddy’s expectations rose, the lower sank my heart!
“Lord, is life to be always grim?” I whispered to Him. His answer was not long in coming.
It was in General Missions class that Dr. Glover repeated a previous announcement. “I have told you before,” he said, “of the Foreign Missions Convention of the United States and Canada to be held in Washington, D.C., January 28 to February 2. The Moody Bible Institute has been allotted eight delegates, but we only have six signed up to go. This will be a wonderful experience, since famous missionaries and native converts from all over the world are coming. President Coolidge is to open the session. I am sure there are some in the student body who can afford to pay their own way. The time is getting short. I would urge you to sign up. Next week is the last opportunity, so get ready.”
Delegate to a great missionary conference in our nation’s capital! My heart reached out in longing to go. Suddenly I felt I was to go. It was as if the Lord said, “You had a long enough siege of sorrow, dear. I’m going to send you to Washington for a little time of joy.” I thrilled through and through and believed Him. Yet it was an impossible hope. I had not a cent to put toward the expense. All week long I imagined the Lord sending me a huge gift of money and my trotting up to Dr. Glover and offering to be a delegate—but not a cent came in.
The last day of opportunity arrived. At Missions class that morning several student volunteers had been asked to speak three minutes each, telling why they felt they should go to the foreign field, and at the end Dr. Glover again made an impassioned plea for one more delegate to the Washington Conference. The opportunity would close that night, he said. I left the class wondering if it had been the voice of the Lord I heard, or had I been deceived by wishful thinking? That noon there was a note in my mailbox. Call at Dr. Glover’s office immediately, it read. With high-bounding heart I simply ran to the building where the Director of Missions had his office and, trembling with excitement, knocked at the door. “Come in! … Oh, Miss Miller, sit down,” Dr. Glover beamed at me. “I sent for you to tell you that someone has offered to pay your way to the conference. Would you like to go?”
“Oh,” I gasped. “Would I? But who could the donor be?” I wondered if perhaps Dr. and Mrs. Page might have offered this help, but how could they afford it?
“The donor wishes to remain unknown,” Dr. Glover replied, “and I believe she is a stranger to you.” He had said she, so I knew it was a woman! He went on: “She has paid your fare, your hotel fees, and meals, and has added an extra twenty dollars just for fun. Here it is. The rail fare and hotel bill I’ll pay for you. Now you’ll have to be ready to leave by tomorrow. Can you make it? I already have permission for you from the Dean of Women.”
I made it, all right!
But I would like to tell you how God worked this out for me, for the dear benefactress did allow me to know the story later on. She was a well-to-do Christian recently widowed. That Thursday morning she happened to be downtown on business near the Institute, and, glancing at her watch, saw there was time to slip in and listen to Dr. Glover’s Missions Hour. As she slipped into a seat among the students, I was called up to give my testimony. When I had finished, Mrs. X——whispered to the girl seated next to her, “Who was that speaker?” We neither of us knew who that girl was, but she told not only my name but also added, “Isobel has been going through deep sorrow. Her mother died before Christmas and a few weeks later her father was nearly killed in an accident.” The kind little widow’s heart went out to me, her own bereavement still fresh upon her, so when Dr. Glover arose to make a last plea for the one remaining delegate, she felt instantly that she would like to send me. “A change of scene, inspiring messages, sightseeing around the capital,” she thought, “is just what that girl needs. I’ll give it to her, and incidentally Moody Bible Institute can have its full quota of delegates.”
God bless His generous stewards who live in the flow of His thoughts, so that He can think and act through them.
Such spiritual premonitions I never had before I found the Lord. From time to time I have had them ever since. I believe they are given for the purpose of comfort and to refresh our experience that He is there, and that He cares. Only God could have worked out that little forecast and fulfillment.
And so began one of the high peaks of joy which tower up exultantly above the painful valley experiences of my life. It was one that has always been outstanding, and it molded my life as I little suspected it would have any power to do, for one of the other eight delegates was John B. Kuhn.
I had been formally introduced to him at last, and it was at a mixed party after all! The occasion was Daddy Page’s birthday, when a group of young Student Volunteers whom the Pages had often had at their home decided to give him a surprise party. I was told there would be boys present and also that one of these would be the brother of Kathryn Kuhn, so I knew I was to meet him at last. But how could I get out of it? If it had been the birthday of a member of the staff, for instance, I could have found an excuse. But my own dear Daddy Page—I just had to go to his birthday party!
The group was to meet at half-past seven on the corner of Clark Street, where we caught the street car. We girls arrived first, and the moon was rising over the tall old houses when we saw the group of boys approaching. “Oh, here they come!” cried the leader of us girls. “Miss Miller, let me introduce Jack Graham and John Kuhn and—" I heard no more. I found myself looking straight into the face of—the dishwasher from the Bible Institute kitchen!
It was a wonderful convention, with world-renowned missionaries taking part. We heard them speak and met some of them personally. Between meetings we went sightseeing. We visited the White House and were presented to President Coolidge, shaking hands with him. After it was over we all had a short trip to Mount Vernon to see the home of George and Martha Washington. What good times we had—sitting together, eating together, sightseeing through snow-slushy Washington, laughing and teasing when we set out to buy Gordon Hedderly Smith some rubbers, only to hear the clerk say they did not carry such a large size!
How little we knew of what future years would hold—that two of the delegates would marry each other and serve Him in far-off Lisuland, that Jack Graham would serve in the same province, ministering to the Miao tribe, that Irene Forsythe would have a wonderful ministry in Shantung among the Chinese, that Gordon Smith would open up work among many new tribes in Indo-China. Friendships were formed during those delegate days that have sweetened the whole road of life ever since.