Let Down Your Bucket
By Emmet Fox
We Live in the Presence of God. The Bible say, "In Him we live, and move, and have our being." This limitless power, which is Intelligence and Love--God--can be contacted at any time by turning to Him in thought, and allowing Him to fill our hearts. Whenever we do this He at once begins to influence our lives for peace and harmony and freedom.
Man wears away his life in the pursuit of outer things, when his salvation lies in discovering the within.
Too often we think of our salvation as being a greater or lesser distance ahead of where we are now, whereas in reality it is right here, or nowhere.
An old story is worth retelling. A party of shipwrecked sailors were drifting on an open boat on the Atlantic ocean. They had no water, and were suffering agonies from thirst. Another small boat came within hail distance, and when the shipwrecked mariners cried out for water, the newcomers said, "Let down your bucket."
This sounded like cruel mockery, but when the advice was repeated several times, one of the sailors dipped the bucket overboard---and drew up clean fresh, sparkling water!
For several days they had been sailing through fresh water and did not know it. They were out of sight of land, but off the coast of the Amazon which carries fresh water many miles out to sea.
This old story is worth recalling, because it expresses beautifully the experience of many people who seek vainly for the good that lies, unsuspected and undiscovered, all around them.
Closer is He than breathing; nearer than hands and feet.--(Tennyson)
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