Chapter Three
CHAPTER THREE
A NEW LOOK
HEN she received her B.A. degree she was twenty-one and one of the most' popular girls in the university; tall and slim, with a quantity of dark hair, and beautifully arched eyebrows. There was a new look dawning in her brown eyes.
Now it was not because her father and her mother told her so, that she believed in God! Her four years at college completed, she came out with conclusions quite at variance with her atheistic professor.
That was in May, 1922.
Her university credits, plus a few months of Normal School, put a teacher's certificate in her hand. It had been her ambition to be a dean of women and teach English in a university. But her youth and inexperience stood between her and even a city high school job. Although she might have taught in a country high school, her mother did not want her to go out of the city to live; so she settled for a position in Vancouver, teaching third graders in the Cecil Rhodes School. This was a disappointment.
She sighed, "In no time I seemed to be alone, wt living in a different world."
Her college clique had scattered after commencement. As yet, _ she had not made new friends at the Vancouver Bible School, where she had begun attending some evening lectures. Then, too, for the first time in her life there was no parental roof to cover her head. Mr. and Mrs. Miller had sold their Vancouver home and moved to Victoria for Murray's sake as he had returned from World War I. So at that time Isobel was boarding in a private home. She made the ninth member of a lively house- ~ hold. Although they welcomed Isobel and begged her to joig them, still she was not quite one of them. She felt lonely.
Besides, she was not happy teaching eight-year-olds. Bothered with discipline problems and bored with teaching elementary subjects, she began to fear failure. ""This was to be my life work, —
A NEW LOOK
but now Ihated teaching. Needing help, I signed up for a teachers' convention in Seattle Pace some holidays."
As Isobel was leaving to take the Seattle steamer, a telegram was thrust in her hand. It was from her father. He informed her that he had arranged entertainment for her in the home of his
Seattle friends, the Otis Whipples. Annoyed, Isobel resented this as interference with her fling at freedom. Did not she have plans of her own? Young life to see? Don, a former boy friend, too? How could Dad be so mean as to tic her down to some stuffy old religious friends of his?
But much as she wanted to, it was too late to telegraph Dad to cancel his plans, and mind his own business.
After her first day at the teachers' conference, Isobel had a dinner date and dance with Don. It was decidedly late when he escorted Isobel to the Otis Whipples' home. But Mrs. Whipple greeted her with a warmth of hospitality that relaxed the young teacher like an open fire on a hearth.
"Better and better I liked Mrs. Whipple. Instinctively, I knew that she was not one to barge into my inner sanctum without an invitation. So finally, when I was shown to my room, my porcupine quills were all safely laid flat."
That night Julia Whipple could not sleep for thinking of Isobel. Out of her bed, and down on her knees she went. "Why have You sent her to us, Lord? What is Your purpose and plan for this attractive girl? How can we help You to help her?"
The next day was Sunday. In the afternoon, on her own initiative, Isobel sought out her hostess; pouring into her sympathetic ears the baffling school-teaching troubles and disappointments.
Then Mrs. Whipple, Spirit-led, felt she could speak plainly to the girl. "Isobel, it's like this: God has a plan for every life. The Bible sis that He has created us unto good works, and foreordained that we should walk in them (Eph. 2:10). That means
He has planned a useful life for you and He does so for each of us. The point as I see it is to find out God's will for your life and to follow it."
"How wonderful!" thought Isobel.
Somehow she did not remember hearing that before. She had only thought of God as a kind of fatherly Being, far off in the sky somewhere. "But," Isobel commented afterwards, "that He was
ONE VISION ONLY
minutely interested in me, had planned a career for me, just moved me deeply. Hardly able to control my voice, I asked,
"Well, how are we to find His plan for us?"
Mrs. Whipple reached for her Bible, and opening it before the kneeling girl, said, "Isobel, I've always found His will through His Word."
Then and there the Lord spoke to Isobel through the words of the Bible before her, and Mrs. Whipple beside her. The girl's faith looked up to God with new affection and a new sense of belonging to Him. It was a crisis in her life. Tears of great relief came in a stream. As God's own daughter, she now wholeheartedly began to seek His will for her future.