Finding the Divine Solution

MANY times when we face problems we go over and over the same ground in trying to find a solution. If we're short of money, we may count our cash or check our bank balance. But we don't always find an answer there. One reason for this may be that when we limit our search for help to our pocketbooks, we're looking at an essentially finite resource. Changing our perspective -- looking to the spiritual -- isn't always easy. But it frees us from limitation because it opens our thought to solutions from an infinite source: God.

Christ Jesus perceived that the source of all good is spiritual and that if we are truly to have what we need we must understand more of our spiritual nature and of our inseparability from God.

Jesus' example is truly without parallel. But he did say, ``He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also.''1 To believe in Jesus is to believe in his teachings -- to understand that in truth we are spiritual, the children of a totally good divine Father. It also requires us to live in obedience to God, to obey Him and to express the qualities that God gives us.

Understanding what spirituality means and can do for us when we face a crisis can be challenging, but it becomes easier as we gradually learn that God doesn't simply give us things. He gives us spiritual ideas and the insight into our true nature as His children that changes our whole perspective on the problem we are facing. This guidance, which is actually a proof of God's love, may lead us to practical measures to resolve our difficulty, but the main point is that God's guidance frees us from limitation.

An important first step in finding spiritual solutions is described in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science. The book points out, ``Desire is prayer; and no loss can occur from trusting God with our desires, that they may be moulded and exalted before they take form in words and in deeds.''2

I learned the value of doing this many years ago. I had signed a lease on an apartment in a poorly maintained building. After much prayer, I moved. But my former landlord insisted that I had to continue to pay the rent until the apartment was relet. A crisis at work led me to share my woes with my supervisor, a Christian Scientist, telling her how hopeless the situation looked. She was silent for a moment. Then she said firmly, ``There may not seem to be a human solution, but there is a divine solution.''

What she told me was to trust God and to try to see the challenge I was facing in a more spiritual light. As I did this, I began to see that a God who is Love would not desert me in time of need. I also began to realize that I needed to behave more as God's child -- really to try to express more love to others, especially toward the landlord and the people who worked for him!

Instead of being desperate in my calls to his office, then, I strove to act on my prayer by being patient and courteous. Within a very short time the old apartment was rented.

For me, this was a wonderful, freeing experience because it taught me that the hopelessness I was feeling really couldn't stand in the way of God, of Spirit, when I was finally willing to look at the situation from a spiritual standpoint. And of course I had to be willing to live from that standpoint, too. If your situation seems desperate and you are looking for help, there is a divine solution available to you also.

1John 14:12. 2Science and Health, p. 1.