Divine solutions to life's puzzles

In solving puzzles, it's the starting point that counts most.

from the March 29, 2007 edition

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How you start a project – or even start your day – often has a significant influence on the outcome.

I was reminded of this recently when I spent odd moments working Sudoku puzzles. These are the tantalizing games that most newspapers now run. Given some numbers to start with, you have to fill in all 81 spaces with the correct numbers. Each row, each column, and each of the nine blocks of numbers must contain all nine Arabic numerals.

It's not as easy as it may look. Working these puzzles tests your mental agility, as you try to find out where each number fits. The secret to succeeding is not only to avoid mistakes along the way, but to get a correct view of the numbers that are already given, and learn what clues they provide. A hasty move, made on a hunch that it may lead to a quick solution, usually leads to a dead end. How you begin is important.

There's an analogy in this to how you pray. Here, too, it's the starting point that counts most. All too often we're moved to prayer because of some pressing human need. That need may naturally seem to be uppermost in thought at the moment. However, the fundamental desire to pray is based on a belief that we can approach – or become aware of – a higher power to help us in our need, a power that people have traditionally called God. The best starting point for such prayer is a humble acknowledgment of God's presence and power in our lives.

In the prayer Jesus gave as a model, he began, "Our Father, which art in heaven." And in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," Mary Baker Eddy reinforced this approach: "The starting-point of divine Science is that God, Spirit, is All-in-all, and that there is no other might nor Mind, – that God is Love, and therefore He is divine Principle" (p. 275).

This describes the most reliable place to begin your prayer. When you turn to a spiritual power and presence to help you, you have already sensed that this power isn't simply an add-on to human existence. It's an admission – or maybe at the start, just an honest hope – that God actually is present for your benefit.

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