Article May 23, 1994 Issue

Accepting the challenge —and the reward

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Some years ago a nest of hornets set up house on our property in a place where they would have been a nuisance. I didn't want to kill or injure them, so I figured out how to move them out. Just as I was ready to start, however, in came my son with his girlfriend, a former pupil of mine from the Christian Science Sunday School. I told them what I was up to. She asked me, in effect, why I didn't use prayer to solve the problem.

She was challenging me to practice what I had preached, to solve my problems by an understanding of the power of Spirit, or God, over His entire creation. How could I refuse to turn to God?

After that alert teenager challenged me, I did pray—over a period of nearly two weeks. Around that same time I also began to pray about news from a war zone in Vietnam. An airfield had been surrounded by troops. The landing strip had been bombed, so no planes could land or take off, and everyone was just waiting for the troops to move in for a massacre. My heart went out to all those involved, especially those who seemed so hopelessly lost.

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