"My , what a 'wagon-load of offal'!" That's what Grandma said when I told her about my terrible morning at school. Offal means garbage, but I didn't know that. I had never heard that word before. So I thought Grandma had said "a wagonload of awful."

"It sure was awful," I said. First we didn't get to go on our field trip to the zoo. There was some big mix-up and the bus never showed up. So we were stuck in that stuffy room. Miss Reed, our teacher, didn't know what to do with us, so she gave us a spelling test. And I missed the word defense. Then all during recess this big kid in sixth grade named Alvie kept spitting into his water pistol and squirting us girls with it. And when I was walking to Grandma's house for lunch, a truck hit the only mud puddle in the whole street. It was right by me, and it splashed gook all over my shoes.

After I finished telling her all this, Grandma was quiet for a few minutes, and we ate our soup. Then she said: "Well, you may have come home from school in a 'wagonload of awful,' but you're going back in a 'chariot of God.' "

At first I thought she meant that she was going to drive me back to school in her car. But that wasn't what she had in mind. She got her Bible—Grandma's Bible was never far—and put it in front of me, open. She pointed to Psalm 68, verse 17, and asked me to read it out loud. It says, "The chariots of God are twenty thousand, even thousands of angels."

I looked up and Grandma's whole face was smiling. There's nothing she liked better than learning about God. She reminded me that He is all good, or else He wouldn't be God. Then she said that God's chariots are good. His angels are His thoughts, and they're always all around us. These good thoughts show us God is in charge of us and taking care of us.

We stay in His chariots by listening for His thoughts all day. He gives us good thoughts, and what they do is take us up on God's highway (that's how Grandma explained it). It's the safe way, the way where there is no room for anything awful. His thoughts keep us good and happy, safe and well, because they help us know we are God's children. We can't be depressed or frustrated, or scared or sick, or mad or mean.

Grandma had explained all this to me before. See, evil really isn't a power at all. It's just a big nothing—a bunch of lies. Even if evil seems to come to us and talk to us to make us think it has power, it can't touch us, because God is the only power there is.

Grandma said we need to be alert not to be tricked or frightened by evil. We don't need to get into a wagonload of awful or be "taken for a ride"! Scared thoughts, sick thoughts, mean thoughts, sad, mad, or bad thoughts, are a wagonload of awful. "But thanks to God we have a choice here!" Grandma said.

So, if you start to feel out of sorts, out of place, out of patience, or out of anything good, that's your signal, Grandma said. Stop in your tracks and say, "Hey, wait a minute! I'm not getting in this wagonload of awful. God is right here, and His chariots are ready for me. I'll stay in them, where I'm safe." Don't worry; when you listen, you can't miss His messages to you.

I told Grandma that was a lot easier for her because she was in her nice, safe, quiet house reading her Bible all day. She read a lot in her Bible and in Science and Health—that's a book by Mary Baker Eddy, and it goes with the Bible and helps explain it.

Grandma laughed and laughed. She said everybody has to be alert. "Think about Christ Jesus: for forty days and nights in the wilderness, not to mention when he healed people, he refused to believe evil or be frightened by it. Jesus knew who equipped him: God. And that's why he didn't give in. And God equips you and me the same way by giving us His thoughts, angels, that give us compassion, courage, and conviction, too."

Then Grandma told me about her morning and how it started off "at the crack of dawn," as she called it, before I was even up. She was praying; Grandma always said that was the most important, precious time of her day. But she was interrupted five times by prank phone calls. Then her washing machine broke and water went all over the floor. Grandma said, "I was standing right here in the middle of this kitchen, and I said, 'Thank you, God, for Your chariots. They're surrounding me, just the way they surrounded Elisha.'" (He's in the Bible. You can find his story in II Kings 6:15–17). Grandma told me she felt "Love's loveliness" (that's God's goodness) all around her.

Our thinking makes all the difference in the world, she said. "From then on, it was a different morning altogether, and I saw only good. Beginning with a call from your mother saying you would be coming for lunch."

"I'm sorry, Grandma, to spoil your good," I said.

"You couldn't," she said. "Remember, there are thousands of angels—plenty to go around."

That afternoon at school was lots better. I remembered about God's chariots and stayed in them the best I could. I refused to think any of those terrible thoughts I'd had in the morning—like feeling let down, frustrated, stupid, and not caring about anybody else. During recess I was nice to Alvie and he was nice back. Everybody in the class seemed happier. And Miss Reed lightened up.

A long time after this I was reading another book by Mrs. Eddy. And it said that evil tries to tie "its wagon-load of offal to the divine chariots" (see Unity of Good, p. 17). But offal or awful—neither one can hook on to us. That's what Grandma was saying. Thank you, God, for Your chariots!