Suppose there was a little, blind ant. It scurried and hurried as fast as it could without stop for five years, so that was all it knew how to do. The terrain was rocky and bumpy; there was plenty there to keep the ant's concentration.

But then, the land ran out. The ant's feelers fumbled helplessly in the open air in front of it. It stopped, frozen in absolute fear. No more "forward" left. Should it turn to the right or to the left? How to decide? Oh, the agony of indecision! This was absolutely beyond its comprehension.

So the ant started in one direction at last. It turned to the right and began to walk. Slowly it gained confidence. Everything was gonna be okay.

All at once, to its shock, the ant ran into something hard and unyielding. It had reached a dead end! Oh, the pain! This was much worse than before. Its way was blocked in front and to the right and left. The only path remaining was back, all that long distance.

The ant was tired. It refused to walk any farther, so there it sat and waited.

Nothing happened, except the ant started to get hungry. Very hungry. It had not eaten for a long time. The empty feeling gnawed at its stomach and sucked at its life. After a while, it became very weak. It could not possibly make it back to its starting point now. It lay down in utter, dark despair and prepared to die.

At this final moment, something changed in the ant's environment. A big finger reached down from above and rested beside the tiny creature. With its last strength, the ant crawled on.

It was blind, so it couldn't see what happened next, but in the ant's weakened state it felt more terrifying than anything that had happened yet. It was flying on the finger through a tremendously huge open space, much more vast than the ant's normal earthbound pathways.

Then it was over, and the ant cautiously crawled off the finger. Its feelers groped around, and it realized it was back at the edge again, in the spot where it had diverged to the right.

It could stop and die, or it could walk to the left. Its body was skinny and emaciated, almost gone. Slowly, it dragged itself leftward.

This time, the ant found something -- a tiny morsel of food. It was too tired to feel much joy at the encounter, but it managed to eat the food nonetheless. With energy to continue, it plodded on.

More food. The farther it traveled, the more food the ant found. And so it proceeded in its blindness, with fear and trembling, but increasing confidence.  ¶ 2:10 PM