Who Will Help Me?
A WOMAN I know once told me the story of a moment when she experienced what is often called a ``new birth." Her life appeared to be closing in on her. There seemed no escape. She remembered pacing the floor one night and suddenly saying aloud in the darkness, ``Who will help me?
This is a familiar moment to many. There comes an hour when we simply cry out our helplessness, pleading for aid. We may wonder if anyone hears us. What can we do? Unknowingly, we may be doing just what is needed by crying out to God.
When troubles arrive--and who is exempt from the challenges that come to us all?--we try the first things we think of, hoping they can remedy the problem without our having to change too much. As these temporary aids fail us, we are finally driven to that stupendous moment of humility when we cry out to God to save us. Our very helplessness can be what introduces into our consciousness the critical element of surrender to the Christ. This is the attitude that permits us to listen to and to hear what we n eed to know to be saved. What we are truly listening for, of course, is God, divine intelligence.
God, our Father-Mother, is never distant or vague. He is always present, always caring for His creation. And we can trust in God's complete power to save us, heal us, protect us. In the Bible, the ninety-first Psalm promises: ``Thou shalt not be afraid for the terror by night; nor for the arrow that flieth by day." Naturally we will ask why this is so. How can we be so certain that we don't need to be afraid? The Psalmist answers this question a few verses later: ``Because thou hast made the Lord, which is my refuge, even the most High, thy habitation."
It is clear that the terms for salvation, for experiencing some measure of a new birth in our lives, require making God our refuge. Indeed, God is our complete solution, the true help we need. The Psalmist confirms: ``I will say of the Lord, He is my refuge and my fortress: my God; in him will I trust."
The majesty of this moment is found in a total acceptance of God's power alone to save us. The ideas we need come to us as the result of our acknowledgment that God is our true refuge and fortress. When we have made God our habitation, we have agreed to dwell within His loving arms. My friend said to me that immediately after this call out into the dark she felt God's nearness and protection. And ideas came to her during the next few days that enabled her to solve all of the difficulties confronting her.
She marveled at the fresh directions that came to her expectant thought as she worked out each problem.
Sometimes we find ourselves wrestling over a problem that is frightening us primarily because we feel we have to find the solution alone. Such a fear stems from the desire to have plenty of friends around us to help--or, to put it another way, from fear of being left alone to solve our problems. Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, speaks of God as divine Love when she writes in her book Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures: ``Would existence without personal friends
be to you a blank? Then the time will come when you will be solitary, left without sympathy; but this seeming vacuum is already filled with divine Love." And in the ninety-first Psalm we read: ``He shall call upon me, and I will answer him: I will be with him in trouble; I will deliver him, and honour him." The Psalmist felt the certainty of God's care over two thousand years ago. The Founder of Christian Science wrote Science and Health just over one hundred years ago. And both point to the timelessness o f the conclusion that God is our refuge and strength, our best friend and strongest deliverer, every moment of our life.
