Job-Seeking: A Helping Hand

TO anyone looking for a job, the arguments are all too familiar: "Things are tight." "People aren't hiring."We do not have to accept this gloomy view of our prospects, however. There is another way to look at life--one that heals. It's the way Christ Jesus taught. In the Bible, John's Gospel tells of a man in Jerusalem who lay by a pool called Bethesda, hoping for healing. According to local belief, the first person to step into the pool after the water bubbled was healed of whatever disease he had. Because the man was unable to walk and had no one to help him, someone else always beat him into the pool. Jesus saw him lying there and gave him a hand, though not in the way he expected. With the authority that his understanding of man's true, spiritual nature gave him, Jesus ordered: "Rise, take up thy bed, and walk. The Bible tells us that the man immediately did as he was told. He was completely healed. Many job-seekers are like that man at Bethesda. They keep hoping to get a helping hand from the right person or to be just a little quicker than the others who are also trying to get a job. But what we need to realize is that by listening to the guidance of God, divine Mind, we'll see how to be healed. Such healing is due to neither accident nor luck. Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, points out in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, "Accidents are unknown to God, or immortal Mind, and we must leave the mortal basis of belief and unite with the one Mind, in order to change the notion of chance to the proper sense of God's unerring direction and thus bring out harmony. I learned the practical effects of God's unerring direction recently when I was looking for a job. It seemed, at first, that everywhere I turned, I heard the same thing. My field was "tight and jobs were few and hard to find. I am accustomed to turning to God in prayer. And I knew that God has a place for all. I listened to know what that place was for me. In the meantime I found plenty of activity at home. With the coming of summer I was able to spend more time with my children and husband and to coordinate a special project at home that needed extra attention. I also sent out letters and resumes for jobs in my field, but had no success. Although I was tempted to feel discouraged and confused, I was encouraged by Mrs. Eddy's statement in Retrospection and Introspection "Each individual must fill his own niche in time and eternity. I saw that when I was striving to obey God, I had naturally to fill my own niche. This made it easier for me to expect that a new job would happen at the right place and the right time. One day as I was praying, it occurred to me to call a former college professor to find out if there were teaching positions available in my field. Immediately the old arguments about a recession began, and I sat frozen with fear. But the praying I had been doing enabled me, like the man at the pool of Bethesda, to rise up. I made the call and found that there were openings. The next week I applied for and received a job. The position provided an opportunity to work with young people and to share wha t I had been learning for the past decade. We don't have to believe in chance or be battered by economic downturns. God's unerring direction is a strong "helping hand that lifts us up and leads us to the right activity.