My wife and I purchased a haven of serenity: a charming property rich with woods opening onto a vista of marshlands off a river. Within nine months, however, that serenity was disrupted by a series of weather events. In the first two, water surrounded our house, filling the crawl space halfway up. The third, a massive storm, brought so much rain over a nearby ocean bay that it backed up the river near our property for miles.
The wind and rain persisted for days while the water kept rising. When water began seeping through the floorboards in the house, we desperately stacked furniture so it wouldn’t all get ruined. We were awake most of the night, monitoring the water level and pondering the uncertainties involved in evacuating.
As we prepared to abandon the house, I stood on the deck and with great conviction said to the storm, “Thus far and no farther.” I recognized this as part of a statement from Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy: “Adhesion, cohesion, and attraction are properties of Mind. They belong to divine Principle, and support the equipoise of that thought-force, which launched the earth in its orbit and said to the proud wave, ‘Thus far and no farther’ ” (p. 124). Although it appeared futile amid the approaching water, I felt compelled to stand up to the claim that there could be any force greater than God.
