A boat and a blessing
Many years ago, while I was a young mother, my next door neighbor and two of his buddies decided to purchase a brightly colored, 20-foot long dilapidated wooden boat, which they intended to restore. They parked their boat and trailer on the narrow strip of grass separating our driveways under my plum tree. The neighbor assured me that this was only temporary and the boat would be moved soon.
But as the days turned into weeks, and weeks into months, I learned that my neighbor’s buddies had lost interest in restoring the boat, and had abandoned their project, leaving the boat beside my house to weather, peel, and fill with rainwater and plums. Naturally, the boat appealed to all the neighborhood children, who often played onboard the increasingly unstable structure, which prompted my neighbor to yell regularly at the children to “stay off the boat!”
When I spoke with my neighbor and his wife about removing their boat, they said they were trying to sell it but weren’t getting any buyers. That’s when I started to pray. For guidance, I searched the Bible and the Christian Science textbook, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy. When I read, “A spiritual idea has not a single element of error, and this truth removes properly whatever is offensive” (p. 463 ), I thought: “That’s it! That ‘offensive’ boat must and will be removed!”
I don’t have to try to change someone else’s thought.
Not many days later, my young daughter was roller skating in our driveway and tripped and hit her head on the boat’s trailer hitch. She came to me crying, with a lump on her head. I comforted her and cared for her needs, but at that point I had lost all patience and unfortunately allowed myself to react with anger and frustration, sending my daughter next door to show my neighbors how hazardous their boat was. My daughter returned a few minutes later saying that their only response was that she should quit skating near the boat. I knew then that only prayer would resolve this situation harmoniously for all involved. None of the human means I had employed had had any effect, and the remaining legal options would only have jeopardized the friendship between my neighbors and my family.
The next evening, I thought again about the idea that “truth removes properly whatever is offensive,” and humbly turned to God for an answer. It was then that I realized that what was really “offensive” was not the boat, but my thought about my neighbors. This awakened me to begin loving the neighbors as God’s spiritual ideas, not trying to change them, but changing my thought about them. And a wonderful thing happened. An acquaintance of our family dropped by unexpectedly for a visit and noticed the boat. He asked if it was for sale, and my husband directed him next door. The boat was sold immediately, the trailer was hitched to our friend’s truck, and, after a short visit, he drove the boat away.
I was awestruck! I realized through this experience that the problems I face are never “out there”; everything can be handled prayerfully in my own thought. I don’t have to try to change someone else’s thought, just keep my own thought aligned with what God, divine Mind, is communicating to me, replacing the lies of material sense with what is divinely true about man.
