Article April 26, 1975 Issue

Watch Out for the Wheelbarrows!

NAOMI RUTH WHEELER

Those of us who recall anecdotes of World War II vintage may remember the one about the captive laborers in an occupied country who were searched each time they left the mines. And every night one of the workers who filed past the soldiers was pushing a wheel-barrow full of sand.

The guards, convinced he was smuggling something of value, thoroughly sifted the sand, but always in vain. Finally one of the other laborers, overcome with curiosity, whispered to the man, "Look, we're good friends. You know you can trust me. Tell me what it is you've been smuggling out every night." From his companion came the obvious but overlooked answer, "Wheelbarrows!"

Mortal mind is a would-be smuggler too. It would have us sifting the sands of thought or experience in search of some deeply hidden cause of unhappiness, pain, disappointment, or failure, when all the while it is the "wheelbarrow" itself—the belief in a personal, finite mind apart from God—that animal magnetism would subtly sneak past us, and that we must halt.

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