Disappoint disappointment
Our two Scottish terriers love to accompany us on outings in the car. When they are not invited, as sometimes they can't be, they stand forlornly at the fence, howling a mournful duet of reproach as we depart. Their complaining, however, doesn't last long. Even if we return after only a few minutes' drive, they're ready to signal forgiveness with a wagging welcome.
When people don't do as we think they should, or when things that happen don't suit us, how long do we whimper about it? We needn't torment ourselves. Instead of lamenting what (in our opinion) should have been, we can reach out to understand what is,m what God knows and makes -- perfect harmony.
God, the one and only Mind, Life, and Love, is incapable of inflicting or tolerating disappointment. Nor can He encounter it. God constitutes all real being, guides every action, governs all identity.
We can trust God's ordering of events and welcome His instruction of our thoughts. We can pray; that loving spiritual sense through which we discern that all things, even those we may deem disappointing, can and must cooperatem in expressing the infinite good that is divine reality.
God's will is always right and ultimately must be done. Christ Jesus, acknowledging this, unreservedly yielded himself to God's governance and so exercised his divine right of dominion over injustice.
When events moved headlong toward disappointment of the Master's mission (or so it seemed to mortals' view), he was not only tenderly reassured by God of the ultimate outcome of good, but he was able to reassure his disciples as well. We , too, can find Christly comfort and promise speaking to us through his words to them: "And ye now therefore have sorrow: but I will see you again, and your heart shall rejoice, and your joy no man taketh from you." n1
n1 John 16:22.
Mary Baker Eddy, who discovered and founded Christian Science, was beset with many disappointments. But she did not permit herself to brood her despair over them into disillusionment. In an address to her Church, she said this: "Our heavenly Father never destined mortals who seek for a better country to wander on the shores of time disappointed travellers, tossed to and fro by adverse circumstances, inevitably subject to sin, disease, and death. Divine Love waits and pleads to save mankind -- and awaits with warrant and welcome, grace and glory, the earth-weary and heavy-laden who find and point the path to heaven." n 2
n2 Message to The Mother Church for 1902,m p. 11.
Let us refuse to keep God waiting. Let us answer Love's plea. Disappointment is, after all, but a false, mortal sense protesting the obsolescence of its own outlining and ruing the invalidation of its own thwarted self-will.
If present events seem more like obstruction than progress, we can be sure that as we pray there will come a turning of the events or a correction of our opinion about them -- or perhaps an adjustment of both.
A divine law that necessitates perpetual spiritual progress for all God's ideas is even now acting to balance justice and mercy. We are all included in its operation. What if we can't yet see that good is supreme and triumphant? Even when the children of Israel could see nothing but the pursuing Egyptians behind them and the Red Sea before them, God had a plan for their deliverance.
God meets our need, too. We will be satisfied -- grateful, even -- with the outcome of God's plan, even if that plan seems at present so vast or so hidden that we may not comprehend all its infinite workings. We will understand as it unfolds. It will unfold as we progress. And we will rejoice even in those perplexities that once made us weep, because they have forced us Godward. DAILY BIBLE VERSE Jesus saith unto them, Children, have ye any meat? They answered him, No. And he said unto them, Cast the net on the right side of the ship, and ye shall find.They cast therefore, and now they were not able to draw it for the multitue of fishes. John 21:5, 6
