Can we adapt?
About one hundred and thirty years ago, a community of hardworking, well-established farmers, fisherman, lumbermen, shipbuilders, and traders, with their wives and families, left Cape Breton Island in Nova Scotia, Canada, and sailed to New Zealand in the South Pacific.
In retrospect, it's interesting to note how readily those pioneering people adapted. And this raises a question for each of us today. In a rapidly changing world, can we adapt?
The answer is yes if we accept the basic fact that God is infinite, impartial Love and that man is made in God's likeness. Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, writes encouragingly, "Love is impartial and universal in its adaptation and bestowals." n1
n1 Science and Health with key to the Scriptures, p. 12
From a material viewpoint, we may seem to be, individually, the product of a particular place and environment, living in an earthly setting and stamped with specific, limited, personal characteristics. Collectively we may seem to be a conglomeration of backgrounds and cultures with conflicting views and traditions. But the absolute and ultimate truth of being is that we are all spiritual offspring of the one, universal, divine Spirit, God. This is man's actual nature, though not apparent to limited human perception.
Man's true nature is unrestricted, free, loving, intelligent. He lives in the realm of God, of Love, where all being is good, reflecting the perfect divine nature. Understanding this to be the fact of our being, we can better adapt to changing circumstances; we can prove good to be constant, because it comes from God.
If we feel restricted by circumstances, or enslaved by conservatism, our primary need is not for a change of place or of circumstances but for a change in our mental outlook. We need to discern through prayer the perfect spiritual state in which we are, in truth, living now.
What we experience individually in our daily lives is a direct expression of the way we view reality. If a change for the better seems necessary, we might well make ourstarting point not to try to change the world but to change our mental posture. Our primary need is to acknowledge and begin to perceive the allness of good, todevelop a more spiritual outlook and insight concerning God and His universe.
Christ Jesus demonstrated the adapability that comes through an understanding of divine Love. He healed the sick, calmed troubled situations, dealt with supply problems in proof of God's love. "Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness," he said; and he followed this instruction with the comforting assurance, " and all these things shall be added unto you." n2 If we take the first step -- the indispensable step -- of spiritualizing our thought, we'll find that our needs will be naturally cared for.
n2 Matthew 6:33
In the Bible we read of the patriarch Abraham looking for a city with foundations, and of the Hebrew people striving to reach the Promised Land. Don't these experiences remind us of the human yearning for a stable sense of society and location -- a yearning that finds its fulfillment in the realization that God's kingdom is everyone's true home?
The kingdom of God, referred by Jesus, is found through an understanding of Love and man's relatonship to Love. It is the consciousness of God's perfect, spiritual universe, which includes man as God's perfect, spiritual reflection.
Wherever we may be, and whoever we may be, we can be aware of this truth. We can realize our relationship to divine Love and know that his understanding enables us to adapt -- in other words, to prove that harmony is the undeniable fact of existence. DAILY BIBLE VERSE I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in ChristJesus our Lord. Romans 8:38, 39
