On Friday I was driving my bus route and I kept having the thought, 'what would happen if my bus broke down...like, really broke down'? I have gotten my bus stuck in the mud a few times, and I have had mechanical troubles that made me limp back to the garage...but never has the bus been completely disabled.
After dropping off my last student I started to smell a very strange odor. About the time I got back into town it was strong, and as I pulled into the bus barn lot smoke started to pull out from the engine. I called in to the office was told to pull into the garage where we soon found that diesel was spraying out all over the engine. Had I been driving a gasoline engine vehicle, likely it would have been consumed in flames.
How much power does our mind have when it comes to control over the world around us? When I was a kid I could will myself into a fever in order to miss school...I genuinely believe that the mind plays a huge control over our own bodies and we can will ourselves into wellness or illness. But what about the world around us? Do we have power in that way?
It is easy to make fun of the people who proclaim that everyone on earth having good thoughts at a particular moment will change the universe. But I wonder, how true might that be? As a Christian I believe in the power of prayer, that in speaking to God things change (even though I don't pray as much as I should). But do we as children of God also have power to change the world around us?
Maybe I was already beginning to unconsciously absorb the diesel fumes as I had those thoughts on Friday. But maybe, just maybe, something within my consciousness helped trigger the problems my bus developed.
Or maybe it's just an old bus driving on terrible roads...who knows. But the mind is a powerful thing.
