Emma used to run our summer basketball camps from a managerial standpoint. This is about how Emma's mom and dad came to be- it is from March 4, 2010.It's amazing what you learn about students, sometimes in a short time frame. I've known Emma for years. She was a regular at our basketball camps while attending another Christian school during elementary and junior high years. Transferring to Westbury Christian as a freshman, Emma has made her mark academically, athletically, and socially as an all around terrific young lady. On her memory verse Tuesday, Emma's prayer request was for her father, running for reelection as constable in a small community fifty miles north of Houston. I had no idea what her father does for a living, let alone that he was an elected public official. (He won, to Emma's delight.) Then today, another bit of the Emma mosaic came to light. In class, we read an entry I wrote several years ago on the parable of the Friend At Midnight. (If interested, you can find it archived on March 4, 2011, entitled Somebody's Knocking.) The story was about a neighbor who knocked on my door late at night after locking his keys in his car. When the kids had read the piece, Emma volunteered a nugget of family history. Her parents met when her father, a police officer, was summoned to unlock the car in which her mother had locked her keys. The rest, I take it, can only be described as a love story. Twenty-plus years of marriage and three children, all traced back to a simple mistake most of us make at least once.
We spoke today in my classes about answered prayer and how undoubtedly, the Lord's ways and timetables do not coincide with ours. We're told the parents of John the Baptist had prayed for a child but I doubt they wanted to wait thirty years to hold that baby in their arms. And yet, the birth of the Baptist just happened to dovetail with the birth of Jesus, the Messiah he would proclaim to the world. Our limited wisdom and inability to see around the invisible corner of time often renders us incapable of knowing what's in our best interest. I doubt Emma's future mom rejoiced and praised God the moment she realized she was outside of her automobile and her keys were not. And yet, without that slip, no meeting, no marriage, and no Emma. It hasn't worked for me like it did for Emma's folks. Every time I've locked my keys in my car, all I got was frustrated. Maybe when I get my new car!
Applicable quote of the day:
"If we could all hear one another's prayers, God might be relieved of some of his burdens.''
Ashleigh Brilliant
God bless,
Steve
Luke 18:1
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