Article October 19, 1998 Issue

Running around in circles, or listening for God's guidance?

Prayer: the most efficient route to a resolution

By Helgá Janesch

Do you ever find yoursel running around, working hard to accomplish things but getting nowhere? I do. At times like that, I recall this statement: "Rushing around smartly is no proof of accomplishing much" (Mary Baker Eddy, Miscellaneous Writings, p. 230). How true this statement proved to be several years ago when all my "rushing" turned up nothing.

Both of my daughters had been accepted at a college in a small university town that was known to have serious housing problems. Students made up a large percentage of the town's population, and the fall semester was starting in a few weeks. With thousands of students returning to school, there was a frantic search for housing.

I did everything I could think of to find a place for my daughters to live. Advertisements in the local newspaper turned up nothing better than a moldy basement room or space in a house that looked ready to be demolished. A rental agency could only offer to add my name to the more than one thousand people already on the waiting list. When I told a man at a gas station I was searching for a place for my daughters to live, he looked at me in disbelief. "It is absolutely impossible to find a room at this time of year," he said. "Don't you know that students sleep in tents on the campus?"

Send a comment to the editors

NEXT IN THIS ISSUE

Article

IN NEXT WEEK'S SENTINEL