Article October 7, 1985 Issue

How do you see yourself?

EVELYN M. S. DUCKETT

Do you see yourself as a typical product of your particular environment and times or as an individual making your own special contribution to them? What kind of thoughts are you contributing to your environment? And will they help to make it better for everyone?

The prophet Elisha must have glimpsed something of the potential richness and fruitfulness of spiritual life and the overflowing goodness of God. This infinite good wasn't apparent to limited, fearful, material thinking. He must also have had a clear sense of God's unfailing provision for man and of his own God-given ability to translate this into what was needed in the scenes that confronted him.

Elisha was a farmer, and he may have once thought of barrenness only as barren ground. But barrenness is often subjective, and it may appear to take different forms at different times. For instance, think what skiers and skaters can do with snow and ice! So a townsman wouldn't worry too much about barren land, and a mining engineer might consider otherwise barren soil very rich if it yielded traces of mineral wealth. But what can we do about unproductivity? What did Elisha do?

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