The divine order and its healing effect

ORDER is more than tidiness. It represents law. And being law-abiding is the foundation of harmony, both individual and collective. For example, if everybody always obeyed the traffic laws implicitly, there would be few, if any, accidents and traffic snarls--even with the same roads, the same cars, and the same drivers. We once had an interesting illustration of this when we were driving home late on a foggy winter night. The fog lights came on, and we found ourselves proceeding in a very orderly way with three lines of traffic abreast, all moving forward together at forty miles an hour, as the flashing signals demanded. We couldn't see farther than the rear light of the car in front of us, but we made good time and reached home safely. The traffic lights didn't know anything about either the fog or the cars they controlled. But the drivers knew the law, and translated it unquestioningly into appropriate action. This points to the way divine law operates, too. The Psalmist sang of the righteous person, ``The law of his God is in his heart; none of his steps shall slide.'' 1 Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, writes: ``God is All, and by virtue of this nature and allness He is cognizant only of good. Like a legislative bill that governs millions of mortals whom the legislators know not, the universal law of God has no knowledge of evil, and enters unconsciously the human heart and governs it.'' She continues: ``Mortals have only to submit to the law of God, come into sympathy with it, and to let His will be done.'' 2 It was through her recovery from the effects of an accident that Mrs. Eddy discovered Christian Science. Through reading an account in the New Testament of one of Christ Jesus' healing works, she was healed of injuries that threatened to prove fatal. She recognized that this wasn't an isolated occurrence. There was a spiritual law behind it, and she began to prove progressively how all disorders can be corrected, and indeed forestalled, by understanding and implementing the law that reverses human fallibility and mischance, and nullifies their unhappy sequence. What is this spiritual law? It is expressed in the supreme control of God, divine Principle, over man and the universe. In reality man is the very manifestation of this Principle. He is obedient to its law and forever in harmony with it. Man, as created by God, isn't a wayward mortal, either accident-prone or exposed to indiscriminate hazards, his own inadvertence, or the unexpected behavior of others. Every trouble--physical, mental, financial, or whatever--might be described as a form of disorder, which can be corrected by divine law. How do we bring this law into everything we do? We have to have a love of order in our hearts. And we need to identify ourselves and everybody else as the individual expression of Principle--to perceive the true selfhood of each one. This makes us naturally orderly, courteous, and just in our dealings. Of course, it's also important that we be activated by a genuine desire to see more of the divine order appearing. But what about people who don't, at present, have a love of order and a respect for law? What about road accidents that are the result of somebody else's carelessness? The answer is that a lawless situation is not beyond correction. As we more consistently turn in prayer to the one divine Principle, realizing that all are truly under its intelligent jurisdiction, we'll see more of the divine order expressed. And in an emergency, we'll know better the appropriate thing to do. Disorder is most quickly remedied by turning to our divine source and to the reality of His perfect government. 1 Psalms 37:31. 2 Miscellaneous Writings, p. 208.