Chapter Ten: There Is a Protecting Presence

Because he hath set his love upon me, therefore will I deliver him:
  I will set him on high, because he hath known my name.
He shall call upon me, and I will answer him;
  I will be with him in trouble:
  I will deliver him, and honor him.
With long, life will I satisfy him,
  And show him my salvation.
    — Psalms 91:14, 15, 16.

THERE is a protecting Presence. I know, for several times I have apparently owed my life to it.

Undoubtedly, we should do our best to avoid hazardous situations in which life is imperiled; but in time of great need, when our human resources are exhausted, it is a priceless boon to know that we may call upon and receive help from a power greater than our own.

Perhaps the ideal demonstration is not to experience such situations. I do not know. I know that I am nearly always "working out" something, learning the application of Truth to some new problem. I have wondered sometimes if I should ever get beyond the point of having problems. Just now I rather hope not! Problems are a joy if you know that they can be, and will be, worked out. It is only the dread, the uncertainty, the fear of failure, that make problems hard to bear.

Nor do I insist that it is God who sends the problems. I do not think that He sends them; I

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think that they arise in our own consciousness, from our own individual way of looking at things, which often is the wrong way. God helps us to work them out.

A problem is the mental state of not knowing the answer to something that you find to be perfectly all right when you do know the answer. Finding the answer is heaven. Dodging the problem, and hence missing the answer, is hell. I have experienced something of both.

Nine years ago I was facing a crisis in my service to Truth. I had been teaching, writing, and lecturing for five years. A new vision, a new ideal, was finding its way through the somewhat confused jumble of ideas that I called my mind. I was finding myself, finding new powers, and yearning to try my wings in new ways. I was at a turning point in my life. Almost without definition, my problem was the deciding of my life work. Should I continue as a Truth teacher, or step through another doorway, the vista from which was very inviting? After a summer's vacation in Los Angeles I was returning home to San Diego. A dinner was planned to welcome me. I was coming right up to a decision and was not feeling at all ready for it.

Perhaps it was subconscious resistance to the return home, with its consequent responsibilities and decisions, that swung me out of the cycle of harmonious events and plunged me into a few hours of confusion.

It was about a five-hour ride in my car, a trip

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that I had taken dozens of times; but I was late in getting started, and I had not gone a fifth of the way when I noticed that the engine was overheating, the radiator steaming. I stopped and found that the fan belt was broken. The nearest garage could not supply another belt. They would send to a supply house. Minutes, and finally an hour, passed before I was on the way again.

Soon I was following the shore line southward. As I was hurrying to make time, the breeze from my car quickened that which came in from the ocean. It was a warm day. I had thrown my coat on the back seat of my open touring car. The wind whipped my coat open; I felt some papers brush my cheek, and saw them sail blithely out over a wide expanse of soggy marsh.

Clutching at my coat, I discovered that two checks, given to me as I had started, were missing. And then, as if that were not enough, a third incident of far greater moment took place. I had covered most of my journey, with only eighteen miles or so to go. But let me quote from the letter that I wrote to a friend the day after the experience:

"I made the Torrey Pines grade nicely, and was hustling along between it and La Jolla. I was about a mile past the Pines grade and was still several miles from the Biological grade, which was yet to be descended before getting to the Jewel City (La Jolla), when I heard a peculiar grating sound near the right front wheel of the

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car, and stopped to see what was wrong. Would you believe it, the hub cap of the wheel and some of the ball bearings were gone! I had been coming heaven only knows how far—up the Torrey Pines grade at any rate—with nothing to hold the wheel in place! It was after five o'clock; there were grades to go down either way before reaching a garage; and of course traveling even on a level road under such conditions is not particularly desirable.

"I first thought of hailing a car and sending word to some garage man to come out and tow me into La Jolla; but the cars that I tried to hail whizzed merrily by. So I decided that the Lord must have been taking care of me for a good many miles, since the wheel had not come off (the tire had wabbled so much that the rubber was worn clear down to the fabric in spots), and that, if He wanted me to write some more books, I should not topple off the Biological grade with Henry (pet name for the car). Besides, it was then so late that any further delay would make me late for dinner—and what is an honorary dinner without a guest of, honor?

"So I pushed the wheel on as far as it would go, climbed back into Henry (gingerly), said a prayer, and drove the remaining miles to the Biological grade; then down the steep, winding road, with the wabbly wheel grinding and shaking away within a few inches of the shortest distance between me and sea level. Of course, I made it all right, and drove into La Jolla. As I passed the

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T------s' place the Lord was surely right alongside, for there in her chummy roadster sat Mrs. T------, just back from town and preparing to put the car away. Fortunately for me, she had stopped at the curb instead of driving into the garage. I should not have expected the T------s to be at home if I had not seen her. They should have been in San Diego to help welcome me home. I 'hove to' and told her what had happened, and we hustled Henry to a garage. Then she, her husband, and I crowded into their chummy roadster, exceedingly chummy with the three of us in it, and whizzed into town—fifteen miles—in twenty-four minutes, with still enough time for me to whisk off a bit of grime before going down to the dining hall as if nothing unusual had happened. Mr. T------had whispered into my ear meanwhile that there would be no garage bill, and to forget all about it.

"The garage man said that it was little short of a miracle that I had made the grade or had even gotten as far as the grade with the wheel in that condition. He said that I had had one chance in a thousand; but I didn't tell him about my arrangement with the Lord, so I suppose he is still mystified—if he remembers the incident.

"This morning the family took me out to La Jolla again to get Henry, who is as good as new. We had luncheon on the T------s' porch, overlooking the ocean, where Mr. T------ looked solemn, and Mrs. T------admonished me never again to try such a stunt, even with the Lord's help. I don't expect such an emergency to present itself again,

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but the experience has given me a renewed confidence that some Power intangible to physical sense has something more important and less spectacular for me to do than to topple off the Biological grade into the Pacific."

I have never ceased to be grateful for that experience. It brought me a new assurance, a personal faith, a sense of the abiding Presence, that perhaps I especially needed right then—and it seemed to decide, forever and without question, what my future was to be. Being thus protected as I returned at least temporarily to His work, I felt somehow that the Father's stamp of endorsement was upon my work for Him, a belief that, fantastic though it was, has taken me happily through many times of confusion.

Was it foolish to take such a risk as I did? The point is that I took no risk! Had I wavered, had I been fearful, the outcome would have been dubious. But, strangely, I did not waver, nor was I afraid. There seemed to be only one thing to do. I did it without fear. I should not advise any one else what to do in such an emergency, except to bid him pray for guidance. In a thousand other such emergencies the right thing to do might be the "sensible" thing—to go for a tow car at whatever inconvenience, in order to be "safe and secure." But I was safe and secure, safe and secure as I had never before felt. In those few stressful moments I gained something that undoubtedly I needed, something that, as I believe, God permitted me to find—as since then He has done in somewhat similar ways—something that I needed, and apparently knew how to accept.

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There is a protecting Presence. I have felt its sublime overshadowing. It has enabled me to come out of sickness in seemingly miraculous ways; it has gone before to remove obstacles from my path; it has helped and blessed and prospered me.

A fool to believe this? Ah, then, I shall be God's fool, and happily!