Volume 8, Issue 3, page 10

ployer as he spoke in passing, to glance down at you in some
surprise and to take note that you were doing his
work. Peter, the big fisherman, was the" rock" on which Jesus
founded His church. Peter was a man who worked
with his hands. With few exceptions, as in the case of Nicodemus,
Joseph of Arimathea, and others , Jesus had
seemed to prefer the companionship of people who worked with
their hands. Moreover , He had gone to them first
when He had reached the decision: "Know ye not that I must be
about my Father's business?"

You were aghast. You were a clerk, a skilled mechanic, a white
collar man, an architect, an engineer, an
executive. It was your task to make money. Was it being about
your Father's business to make money? It depended,
you supposed, on what the money was used for. Wbll

what did you use your salary for? The good oi others. The good of
yourself, too, you decided, and didn't feel selfish
that some of your salary was set aside as your personal own.

Whatever I do, you decided that first day of The Experiment, I am
"about my Father's business". For business is
for profit. Small business profits the few. Large business
profits the many, little or much. And the few and the
many are the Father's children. There is no business but the
Father's. You might, you decided wryly, exclude
such"businesses" as robbery, burglary, theft, embezzlement,
murder, rapine, war, the " rackets "- even tho when you
did that you recalled. with some wonderment , that Jesus had been
crucified between two thieves. to one of whom
He had said:

"Thy sins are forgiven thee. Today thou shalt be with me in
Paradise."

You didn't quite understand that, in the light of what you were
learning. The most you could get out of it just
now was that Jesus had been compassionate and forgiving. He'd
forgiven one of the Marys, too, for a sin that may
or may not have been more grievous than theft. You realized that
while you had in your time sat in judgment on
sinners, if not on sins. you had little real knowledge as to
their relative merits as sins. It struck you that what
seemed to you like a very small sin might strike somebody else -
Jesus, for example - as very large. Didn't the sins
of other people, you suddenly asked yourself, seem much larger
than your own-when they were in fact the same
sins? One example: You broke the speed limit when, in your sound
judgment, it seemed justified. For the other
fellow, there was never any sound justification.

Then you got back to the matter of your work. You felt like
telling everybody in your section, or department, or
group, that all work was the Father's business, and you could
prove it in countless ways. You could go far back to
the first days, when He had said,"Be fruitful and multiply, and
replenish the earth". Man had been fruitful since then,
and the earth had iequired continuous replenishing, would daily
require more and more. Your work was vital
"replenishing"! So was the work of your fellow employes. And you
knew, because for so long you had been one of
them, that almost none returned work for pay,"measure for
measure, pressed down and running over". You should
rise up among them this instant and tell them so.

"Softly, now, softly," you said for Jesus. Olest you fall into
one of the worst faults of man: that of setting
himself above his fellows because he has become aware of an old
thing that he believes is a new thing, and sets
about reforming his fellows before he has found the

efficient way to his own reform. Do your own work as you feel
proper. You'll find that your efficiency increases
with awareness. You'll find something else: that your
concentration, your efficiency, has a way of rubbing off on
associates. They contract it, as they would contract disease if
you had one. Moreover, their nextnear associates
partake of the new-old thing, and lo, your example ripples
outward like waves in a big pool from the spot where the
pebble dropped. But rise and express your judgment of your
fellows, and what happens?"

You knew the answer to that, all right . Start preaching or
teaching and someone was sure to rise up in his turn,
or out of turn, and jeer thus:

"Look who's talking! Who made this man to
be a jud I IP
ge over us .

'Yes, , Jesus might have said,"they treated me that way, too. I
was right, but that was not the point-not for me
nor for you. You can be right and yet find yourself in the
pillory. in fact that is often the result of being right. "

you tasted your new efficiency and found it good. Your work was
more interesting, now that you knew it an
important segment of the"Father's business". It went much better,
too. It didn't drag. You realized that never had
business itself dragged; it had always been you who had dragged.
That was over now, you insisted, for good and all.

Another idea illumined you: Before you had been aware that your
work had been the "Father's business", had it
yet been the Father's business? Of course. Therefore, everybody
who worked with you, whether or not he knew it, or
she knew it, was about the Father's business also. And what,
further, did that mean, with relation to Jesus?

"Where two or three are gathered together in my name ... "

His name, hereabouts, was rather frequently used, but not in
religious discourse or prayer : in "vain swearing".
No matter, if the mind and brain and heart were engaged in vain
swearing, the hands which nevertheless did their
work were simultaneously about their Father's business.

Such vain swearing seemed almost unforgivable, until you
remembered yet another thing: Peter had thrice denied
his Master, and once he had cursed mightily to emphasize his
denial . Yet Peter had remained the head of the church.
Was it possible, you asked yourself, while your hands flew, while
your brain worked at your task, and your heart
remained attuned to the Presence, that Jesus and His Father were
more forgiving of man than man was?

At the end of the first hour you raised your head and looked
around you. You had never seen everybody so
wrapped up in the general task.

Because you had been setting agood example? possibly, but Who had
put the bees in the bonnets of the others,
really? Had the Back Seat Driver been, for that hour, as diligent
as usual "about my Father 's business" ?

You thought so. You also gave some thought to how you, and all
your forebears back to the Holy Land of
Jesus' time in the flesh, had been not helping; had in fact,
literally, been dragging your feet.

You wouldn't be tiring in your second hour, you decided. You
wouldn't be dragging your feet. In fact, you felt
stronger somehow, more full of zing, as if good work had made
other good work easier in advance.

(Continued in the next issue)

e RBERREE

JUNE, 1961