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Out of time
It was a Friday afternoon many years ago, the day before my Christian Science teacher’s first annual association day meeting. I was part of the executive committee that was supposed to meet and help set things up at the church where the meeting would be held. And since it was our teacher’s very first association meeting, we wanted everything to go smoothly.
Punctuality has always been important to me, and since I had recently moved an hour and a half away from the city, I had left two and a half hours before set-up was to begin to give me plenty of time. Outside of the city, there had been a traffic incident and we were at a standstill for over an hour. I had become anxious and was having a difficult time praying.
When I finally came to the place to turn off the freeway, and was still about 40 minutes from the church with many lights and heavy traffic, it was 4:16 and the meeting would begin at 4:30. The realization that God was my pilot, not my copilot, struck my thought like a lightning bolt. I began to affirm that I had allowed plenty of time and no accident could have occurred to hinder the divine process going on for all (see Mary Baker Eddy, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 424 ).
Psalm 119 states “Great peace have those who love your law; nothing can make them stumble” (verse 165, New Revised Standard Version). Certainly, I love God’s law, I realized, and there could be no stumbling or delay. This was to be a wonderful opportunity to see God in action!
Since I had no cellphone with me and could not pull over to use a telephone because of the traffic, I simply prayed for spiritual truths. In Science and Health, Mary Baker Eddy states: “Life is without beginning and without end. Eternity, not time, expresses the thought of Life, and time is no part of eternity” (p. 468 ).
The thought of driving faster, and perhaps not staying within the speed limit, came up and left just as quickly when I knew that was not the answer. Several times I also had to consciously stop my eyes from looking at the clock on the dashboard. I didn’t want to examine the evidence and conclude that I was running out of time. I had remembered a healing of a skin condition on my hand when I had consciously reminded myself of not checking on matter to see if it was healed.
My heart became so filled with expectation of the message that awaited me the next day at association, and the love of my classmates and teacher whom I hadn’t seen in a year, that I forgot the time.
When I pulled into the church parking lot and looked at the time, it was not even 4:30, and when I had looked at the clock as I had turned off the freeway, it had been a little past 4:15. I was right on time for the meeting after all. There’s no earthly way I can explain this. But it’s clear to me that when I finally yielded to the Father, I became joyous rather than downtrodden, and glimpsed something of the eternal.
—Becky Barrett-Alford, Wimberley, Texas, US