My husband and I had been looking forward to a long-distance race on our sailboat. We had registered with the race committee and practiced. On the morning of the race, however, my husband awoke not feeling well, citing a seasonal allergy known in the region as “cedar fever.”

Disappointed and more than a little annoyed, I canceled with the race committee. After preparing and eating breakfast, I then joined a friend on the telephone to read aloud together that week’s Bible Lesson from the Christian Science Quarterly.

The subject that week was “Love,” and one of the citations was from First John: “God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him” (4:16, Revised Standard Version). For the next half hour, I paid full attention to the words and ideas we were reading. When we finished, I felt like a new person and realized I wasn’t upset anymore.