Article August 19, 2013 Issue

New perspectives through pauses

Anni Ulich

When traveling, have you ever paused to be grateful for a railroad station, or a rest stop by the side of the highway? They’re good places to stop, relax, enjoy the view, or get something to eat and drink—all in the knowledge that this is just a temporary stop on the way to the destination. Such a stop often leads us to some great new experience!

Many years ago at a Wednesday evening testimony meeting I attended in a Christian Science church in New York City, a gentleman got up and related an account of a young man who came to a Christian Science practitioner and asked for help because his bicycle had been stolen. As a messenger boy, he was nothing without his bicycle. The practitioner assured him that he would pray for him. A few days later the young man came back because the bicycle had not been found. The practitioner again assured him that he would help him, but the young man became desperate because he was not able to perform his job as a messenger boy without a bicycle. Then, after a few more days, he appeared at the doorstep of the practitioner’s office, beaming because he had found another, much better, job. He would not have been open to this job if he had still been a messenger boy on a bicycle.

The gentleman in church continued by telling of a time when he himself was quite young and very much in love with a lovely girl. The girl’s mother, however, was strictly against this friendship. The gentleman said that he prayed daily that God might change the mother’s mind. But this did not happen. However, he continued, everyone in the congregation who knew his wife could understand how happy he was that the other friendship did not end with a wedding, since he would not have met his present wife!