I CAN’T MAKE MY MIND SIT DOWN

It HAD BEEN a hot, hectic day. A little child was restless and nervous; she had had so many exciting episodes that day that her little mental engine was running in high. It had been her birth- day and there had been a party in honor of the event with five glowing candles on the cake—blown out at the first lusty puff. There had been ice cream, cake, and presents galore.

Then night came and she was excited and nervous—so much so that she couldn’t sleep. The hot spell didn’t help any and even her mother felt it, as she tried to read the child to sleep. Finally in desperation the mother said, “Just why can’t you settle down and be quiet, darling?”

The little girl looked up at her mother and said, with a pro- foundness, “Mother, it’s just that I can’t make my mind sit down!” The mother smiled to herself and said, “I understand, darling. That’s what’s the matter with all of us. We just can’t make our minds sit down.”

And yet, that is exactly what we have to learn to do. I know one way to do it. On a trip to Nova Scotia some of my friends took me up on a high hill to a point which they called the “Look Off.” I had a difficult time trying to say the “Look Off.” for I wanted to say the “Look Out.”

But it was the “Look Off.” From that glorious height I could look down over the peaceful Bay of Fundy without a ripple on its placid surface. It was just at that summer evening hour when the mighty tides had run in to their full fifty feet and at that moment just before they turned to go out again.

It was twilight. In front of me was that gloriously beautiful Annapolis Valley and the Grand Pré, “Evangeline,” country. It lay before my astonished eyes in small plots as evenly marked out as if an engineer had planned it.

One field was deep green with grass, another with even rows of apple trees, another yellow with ripe wheat, another tawny brown with hay. Just be- low me a farmer at the evening hour was tossing hay onto a wagon drawn by two white horses. Two children sat on the ground beside the wagon. Crimson, gold, and amber lights adorned the sunset skies.

A spire crowning a little white church was silhouetted against that crimson sunset. A feeling of quiet and peace came over my soul. I was at long last at rest in my soul. Suddenly I found that my soul had relaxed and that I could get my mind to “sit down.”

We all need to discover something which will help us to get our minds to sit down. For some it will come in prayer in a quiet church; for some, on a mountaintop viewing a peaceful scene; for others, with poetry, music, a great book; for some, communing with friends, with great thoughts, and with God. Oh, the little birds sang east, and the little birds sang west. And I smiled to think God’s greatness flowed around our incompleteness, Round our restlessness his rest.