And what, you may ask,
What would you do if you were one of many small Japanese grocery store owners, and watermelons were a problem? They are too round and rolly, and take up too much space.
Do you just live with the problem?
Creative Japanese farmers found a solution. Soon they were growing cube-shaped watermelons. While the melons are small, the farmers place them in a box, and as they grow, the young fruits take on the shape of the box.
Although this is a story about fruit growing inside a box, what a great lesson it serves for thinking outside the box!
How often we feel trapped because things “have always been” a certain way. Yet in the infinity of a universal Mind, there must be solutions even to situations that seem hopeless or discouraging. Adopting an attitude of hopefulness opens thought to new possibilities.
When our young family was applying for a mortgage to buy a home, I had unintentionally given an overestimate of my husband’s salary to our contact at the bank. When I discovered the mistake a few days later, I felt very discouraged. From what we had been told, his actual salary was likely to be insufficient for us to qualify for the loan.
We agreed to think outside the box of discouragement. Together we looked away from the economy and facts and figures, and instead to God as Spirit for solutions.
If this house was right for our family, we felt a universally good God would show us how it was to come about. If it was not the right place for us, then there was something more suited to our needs, and this caring God would help us find it.
As it happened, we qualified and lived happily in that home for many years.
While I didn't need to invent a box for shaping watermelons, I did learn an important lesson about being willing to take a new look at circumstances, to look for answers beyond the boundaries of how things appear to be.
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