“God is love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him”,from the Bible I John , chapter 4, verse 16.
Mary Baker Eddy says this: “Love inspires, illumines, designates, and leads the way.” Science & Health with Key to the Scriptures.
My daughter, Sarah, and I learned some lessons from the quotes above, when she called me to pray with her. Her trembling voice told me that she was a good deal shaken. She’d done weeks worth of research for her school’s unit project as a teacher candidate and had typed it up and stored it on a thumb drive—a new, expensive thumb drive with a nice case. She’d made no back-up. Now, in frantic gasps, she was telling me that it was still in the computer at a public library and it had been at least four hours since she’d left the library. She was afraid that it had been stolen or thrown away. To compound what she was dealing with now, she had recently had a theft in the school’s parking lot of her car’s CD stereo system and she felt discouraged with society’s unlawfulness in general.
We prayed about the true man’s innate honesty—that, in reality, God’s man is not a thief and that nothing good or spiritual can ever be stolen or taken from us. We prayed to know that God always gives Sarah all she needs, because we know that her needs are spiritual, and therefore permanent and uncompromised. That struck a chord with her, so she and I were at peace knowing man’s true nature. We agreed to pray with these ideas and understand that this is true for her now, and also to know that it is also for the person who had stolen her CD player. We’ve found that knowing what is spiritually true about God’s man can only bless and bring healing for us. We also know that forgiveness is healing and transformation is inevitable. Divine Mind (another biblical name for God) governs, directs, impacts, and nurtures righteous thinking, motives and aims. And in the process our prayers for everyone bless and inspire our thoughts.
As she drove to the library I wanted her to feel God’s comforting love every step of the way, so I shared the first verse of a favorite hymn with her as we stayed connected on cell phones. The words are:
“I walk with Love along the way,
And O, it is a holy day;
No more I suffer cruel fear,
I feel God’s presence with me here;
The joy that none can take away
Is mine; I walk with Love today.”
From the Christian Science Hymnal, hymn # 139
I also shared an idea that I’d been praying with from the Epistle of James, Chapter 17:
“Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.” I was thinking that God’s provision for Sarah included no chance of failure or unhappiness. In fact, it seemed right to me that if the thumb drive was not at the library, we could be confident that God, who is divine Mind, would reveal to her everything she needed to re-construct her project.
Sarah regretted that she had been forgetful. I told her that God’s tender Mothering love was caring for her—that God loved her right then and she didn’t have to be afraid. I’ve noticed that Sarah sees in each individual child she interacts with, the beloved child of God having unlimited love and acceptance from God. She sees that each child is God’s reflection, and each one can accomplish great things in individual, unique ways—that every child makes a distinctive contribution—and that their purpose is acceptable and blessed of God. As she has understood these ideas over the last semester, she had seen improvement in children’s behavior in the classroom where she was student teaching.
Meanwhile, as Sarah neared the entrance to the library, we talked about a time when Sarah was in high school taking a math test. Math had never been Sarah’s strong subject and she battled for every good grade in this class. This particular day as her exam paper arrived, she saw there wasn’t a single problem that looked solvable to her. But as she turned her thought to God, she remembered a helpful thought; “the Mind that makes the test, takes the test” which was an idea she’d heard in the Christian Science Sunday School she attended. In other words, she understood that she is the direct recipient of Mind’s intelligence. Mind knows, and Sarah, as the expression of divine knowing, receives all the information to complete Mind’s purpose for her. She knew she could be receptive and open to Mind’s ideas. She saw one problem that appeared doable to her. When she’d completed the first, she noticed another problem she could work out. One by one, she found she could, with divine Mind as her mind, finish the test. Later she found she’d received a perfect grade.
Now, back at the library, phone in hand, she made her way to the computer and didn’t find the thumb drive, and next to the librarian’s desk, but no thumb drive. Then she went to the information desk and she found that someone had turned in the thumb drive, along with its case—which suggests to me that God’s restoration is complete—that God withholds nothing needful. Sarah’s information was saved, and she completed the work over the next few days on her project. The presentation went well and she graduated from her teaching program.
The outcome which proved to be the ultimate blessing—was threefold—Sarah found her thumb drive complete, including the case; she learned that honesty is truly the innate nature of man; and she completed the portfolio for graduation.
As an added bonus, when Sarah traded in her car to buy a new car, she was given more than she expected for her trade-in. The car dealer didn’t take off for the missing stereo. So she was fully compensated for the stolen stereo in spite of the theft.
