Daniel's Faith

The following story will shed light on Daniel's faith.

The way I write it down is exactly how it happened.

It is summer 1998 and I have to go to Honshu for a scientific meeting. Summer in central Japan means Rainy Season. A humid and for me absolutely disgusting weather condition, in which bread may turn bad within 24 hours. A warm rain take turns with nearly 100 % humidity which makes life outside airconditioned rooms absolutely horrible.
Anyway, the evening before I have to go on a trip to Kofu, the capital of Yamanashi Prefecture west of Mt. Fuji, the weather report is less than encouraging. For the next three days a heavy rain front is expected.
"I do not want to go to Honshu in such a weather!" I exclaimed during dinner time. I hate it when my suit gets all wet. Its humid and terrible. Yuck!"
I do not think further, but that evening Daniel demonstrates us once more how much he believes in God.
At least one of us, Yuki or me, pray with the children before they go to bed. As most evenings, also today it is Yuki who brings the kids to bed. When she comes down, she tells me that Daniel prayed for good weather on my trip (among many other things). Yuki closed the prayer with a not wholeheartedly 'Amen', because she doubted that this is a prayer that will be answered.
The next morning I leave for Tokyo. Of course it is raining when I arrive in Haneda Airport. I take the Limousine Bus to Shinjuku and when I get off the bus I have my umbrella already in my hand, ready to open it. Of course I need it. It is rainy season. But after 50 meters of walking distance I can fold my paraplui and walk the rest of the way to Shinjuku train station under a cloudy, but dry sky.
Arriving two hours later in Kofu, the weather has stabilized. The next day, I suffer from the high humidity and the heat. The air is heated up by the sun that shines from a cloudless sky! For the whole two days in Kofu I do not see a single drop of rain. Back in Tokyo, still no rain. Taking the monorail to Haneda airport I see the first clouds forming, thickening more and more. Then, when my airplane is on the runway and waiting for the okay from the tower to lift off, the first drops fall. I leave Tokyo the very time when it starts raining again. After I am back home I tell Daniel that it didn't rain for the whole time, and he smiles and he is really happy about it.
I encourage him to pray more prayers like this. He had the faith that God is listening to his prayers, and he is rewarded for it. THis one incidence is another stone in the stronghold of faith that is beginning to be built in him.

You might say that this is a self-fulfilling prophecy, since I wouldn't have mentionned this episode if it would have poured 100 mm of rain in 24 hours in Kofu. The very reason that the existing, but small probability of a sunny day in the mids of rainy season by chance beame reality, does not convert this anomaly into a miracle. But the fact that it didn't rain, does not change. As well as the fact that I have not heard Daniel praying for good weather on other occasions. Coincidence - maybe, but for me it is a sign that Daniel moved something in heaven when he prayed. For God it is less than a miracle to command the clouds to disappear over a sleepy province capital for mere two days.
[Another coincidence? The moment I write this note, I listen to the song 'a day without rain', from the headphones of an  airplane, on Nov. 13, 2000.]

And so the fact that Daniel had a child-like faith in an almighty God does not change. We will never know what his last thoughts were, but it is my hope that he never gave up the faith in an almighty and mercyful God. But I know that he is being rewarded for his faith. Rewarded not with a healthy body, even though he and we prayed for it, but rewarded with a much more important thing, a healthy relationship with God.