Now Playing: Tchaikovsky, Violin Concerto in D, Finale--Allegro Vivacissimo.

All day I've been trying to avoid thinking about the GRE. This morning I sat down and worked on math for an hour before breakfast and was only discouraged as I missed about a quarter of the problems in each set I attempted. That's the last of my practice, though. I can't do anything about it now. If it's in my head, it's in my head; if it's not, it's not.

My only comfort is that God Himself is overseeing this exam and its outcome. Anna reminded me yesterday that whether I get a good test or a hard test, whether I remember what I've learned and practice it or not--it all depends on sheer providence. Nicole said something similar. I can't keep myself from freaking out and losing my head. I can't keep myself from going "high" and breezing through the exam, only to find that I've ignored most of the directions on the way. Physically, emotionally, mentally I have very, very little control over myself. That's true. No matter how well disciplined I may be, if some chemical in my brain isn't balanced just right tomorrow, there's nothing I can do to change it.

Now that sounds very fatalistic. I had a professor once who declared in class that he thought it was useless to pray before an exam. "You should be studying, not praying!" he pontificated. On a practical level, maybe that's true. But I say I believe in a sovereign God who is closely concerned with every detail of my life, a God who worked out to the most precise millimeter how far away the earth would be from the sun, and how many cells would be in each blade of grass, and what color my hair would be.

It seems ridiculous, in one sense. God has a cosmos to manage. Surely He can't be conscious every moment of every day of exactly what one individual human being is thinking or doing. Surely He can't be involved with every detail of every life that's being lived at this moment--not to mention every detail of nature and its laws. He must know about everything in some grand, supreme, impersonal sense. He must command, "Hearts, keep beating," and "Sun, stay in your course," and "Rain, fall," in a general, big-picture sort of way.

Hard as it is to believe, though, that's not what God says about the way He operates. He told us that He has counted every hair on our heads, that we are more precious to Him than many sparrows (grand example of litotes there!). He doesn't command every human heart to beat in some impersonal way. He says, "E--'s heart, beat now, beat now, beat now, beat now." He has planned (not just knows, but has planned) what I will eat for breakfast tomorrow, and what I'll say to Katie on Saturday, and whether the Pythagorean theorem will be tested tomorrow.

Listening to The Silver Chair this evening, I realized that God controls even our appetites and desires, things we normally think of as being wrong. As Christians, we seem to spend most of our time trying to control our appetites and desires, trying to subdue our dreams and goals, trying to weed them out. We talk a lot about conformity to the will of God, about being content with His plan for our lives.

At the beginning of The Silver Chair, just after Jill has pushed Eustace over the edge and Aslan has blown him to safety, Jill has a good crying fit. And then she becomes very, very thirsty. Now my reaction to such a desire might be, "No, I'll not go and get a drink. I don't deserve it just now." But in the story, that appetite impels Jill to seek water, and, with the water, to discover Aslan himself, in all of his stern grace.

So I realized this evening that God controls, gives as a gift, our appetites and desires, whether that be so that we can learn His grace by controlling them failingly (when they are sinful), or whether that be so that we can glorify Him when He satisfies them.

And, of course, the satisfaction of these desires lies in the hands of the God who sacrificed His Son in my place. Isaiah 43 always gives me pause for thought. God tells His people that He gives Egypt as their ransom, Cush and Seba in exchange for them: "Because you are precious in my eyes, and honored, and I love you, I give men in return for you, people in exchange for your life."

This isn't simply the Old Testament God attempting to comfort His people with some sort of political analogy. This is a foreshadowing (another grand understatement!) of what God will give in exchange for His people: His own Son, who is far more rich and powerful and lovely and dear to Him than any pagan nation in the bloom of its golden age.

So when I walk into the exam building tomorrow and sit down at that monitor to take that test, the outcome, whatever it is, lies in the hands of this God.