A Way Out
Even the snowplow was stuck! The huge vehicle, its big bed laden with road salt and sand, was slipping and spinning in the cab-high snowbank at the side of our road.
Yet, there was no doubt the truck would be freed. Shovels, smaller trucks, a new idea, as well as a push from a front-loader, and the plow was back in service, finishing its important work.
The memory of that big stuck truck came to me later as a useful metaphor. I hadn't thought for a minute that the truck would spend the rest of the winter in the snowbank, freed only with the spring thaw. It was needed. Efforts to move it would be successful.
Perhaps you might wonder about freedom from your own personal challenges. Do you sometimes feel there's no way out, that you're stuck in a circumstance forever, or at least for the foreseeable future? But where is there help amid that kind of thinking? And where is God? Is He absent, unable to help, unavailable? Certainly not!
When faced with difficult situations, I've found that the quicker I remember God's power, as seen in the promise "I am the Lord that healeth thee" (Exodus 15:26), the quicker I am freed from whatever my trouble may be.
If we consent to being trapped in some way, or to being beyond aid, we're actually denying God - denying His presence and power to heal. To find solutions, we need to reach out for God's care and love and trust Him. We need to know His unfailing goodness. As in the case of the snowbound plow, we need to remember that through God there will come a freeing, a restoration to normality. God bestows harmony, not discord; peace, not strife; health, not sickness. We can learn to expect God's care, feel that we are walking with Him, our hand in His, despite what circumstances we might be facing.
As I write today, I'm looking out the window at the mouth of a large river, where it joins the open ocean. The tide, which was at full high when I came to my desk, is now quite low. In a few hours there will be only a thin channel where before there had been a broad basin of water. But in all the time I've lived here, the tides have never failed to flow with perfect regularity. So consistent and unfailing are they that they can be calculated to the minute. Does it stand to reason that God would care more for the oceans than for us, His loved children?
When trouble confronts us, the very first thing we can know is that God's love for us is unfailing and powerful. This divine Love heals, transforms, rescues. It is as reliable as the incoming tide or the rising sun. We need to know this, cling to it, trust it. It doesn't matter whether our difficulty is poor health, lack of resources, oppression, loneliness, or fear for ourselves or our loved ones. When we understand that God loves us all, and that this love is universal and omnipotent, we find ourselves free.
The textbook of Christian Science, "Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures," by Mary Baker Eddy, explains God's unconditional, unfailing love. It says much when it says this: "Truth is always the victor" (Pg. 380). This Truth is divine Truth, God. It vanquishes all evil. Nothing overpowers God. When we feel stuck in adversity of any kind, we can remember to lean on God, to work harder at loving Him and feeling His love, to practice loving our neighbors, ourselves, and even our enemies. The teaching of Christ Jesus, who so thoroughly proved the freeing power of Truth, demands this.
There's really no valid reason for doubting the power and presence of God. Nothing can delay, change, obscure, or remove the power of divine Love, any more than it can stop the tides. (By the way, do you know what freed the snowplow on that blizzardy day? Several men unhooked the plow blade, and this removal of weight at the front enabled the truck to back up into the road. Then the blade was reattached.)
God gives you all the good, all the wisdom, that you need. God is always with you, right here, right now. God, divine Love, communicates every right idea necessary to heal and be healed, to be freed from harm. God does not fail to care for us. He does not withhold any good. Of this we can be sure, for the Bible reveals it.
