Article July 16, 1984 Issue

The big minute

THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR

I was running to catch the six o'clock commuter train. There wouldn't be another one for an hour. When I finally reached the station and looked at my watch, however, I gave up. One minute to six, and the platform for my train was the farthest one away. I'd never make it. Then I looked up at the enormous station clock. It also said one minute to six —but what a huge minute! Much bigger than the tiny one on my watch! So I started to run again, and made my train just as the conductor was closing the doors.

I've thought about that big minute many times since, when I've felt thwarted by not enough time or money or ability. How often we limit ourselves and don't start a project because we believe we'll fail. Frequently the obstruction masquerades as human logic. (It was certainly "logical" to give up on catching that train.) But we can gain dominion over material constraints as we accept the freeing spiritual fact, brought out in the Bible, that we are the children of God, His image and likeness, not struggling, frustrated mortals.

The Bible is full of inspiring accounts of people who refused to be limited by appearances, by the material evidence before them, no matter how daunting it seemed. For example, God told Elijah to go to Zarephath where a widow would feed him. But when he got there, and asked the widow for a morsel of bread, she told him she couldn't possibly do as he asked because she herself had so little. "As the Lord thy God liveth, I have not a cake, but an handful of meal in a barrel, and a little oil in a cruse: and, behold, I am gathering two sticks, that I may go in and dress it for me and my son, that we may eat it, and die."

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