Solving the biggest problem

What's the biggest problem facing you? Unemployment? Addiction? Disease? These are big problems, but not the biggest. They can and will be solved much more quickly than we might believe, if we'll only get to work on the biggest problem of all - our unwillingness to trust God with all our heart.

Of course there are lots of ''reasons'' why we can't afford to trust God completely. Some of them are profoundly intellectual. Many of them are backed up by the ''hard facts'' of human existence. God's words in Isaiah, ''As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts,'' n1 may sound like a cop-out to one who urgently needs a way to put food on the table or to overcome the panicky urge for a ''high.'' To say, in this modern age, ''Be still, and know that I am God,'' n2 can sound distressingly naive, vulnerable to withering contempt and ridicule.

n1 Isaiah 55:9.

n2 Psalms 46:10.

But God's higher ways and thoughts don't separate Him from His children; they separate Him - and His children - from materialism. He is a very present help in trouble, and as we turn to Him, we are provided with the food, shelter, peace, that we need now. But to avail ourselves of His help we must obey His law and trust Him with all our heart. And we can only come to trust God as we learn to silence materialism and turn off the mental reservations and cynicism that obscure our vision of the innocent, trusting child of God each of us truly is.

A consciousness in which fear and the turbulent groping of the human intellect have been quieted permits the ever-present light of divine Love to bathe us in its eternal message of hope and promise. If we will but trust in this Christly message, it will lead us to the place where we need to be, to the love we need to share, to the blessed peace we yearn for - to the ''green pastures'' and ''still waters'' the twenty-third Psalm describes. And as we accept this spiritual message, it heals all our diseases, destroys obsessive desires, and puts food on the table.

Christ Jesus urged, ''Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls.'' n3 What is his yoke but trusting obedience to the law of divine Love? Love's law sets aside the limits that seem so real and justifiable to the proud, unbending intellect and reveals the inexhaustible nourishment of Love for its idea, man. Love's universe is already complete, already finished and perfect, and man's dominion is fully established. It can be progressively seen and expressed as we humbly learn to set aside what material sense has wrongly taught us to believe in - the division of our allegiance between matter and Spirit - and as we turn with complete, childlike trust to our Father-Mother God.

n3 Matthew 11:29.

Such trusting and undivided recognition of God's infinite, ever-present perfection melts the false sense of His absence. And that melting leads us to the human answer we need. ''Science reveals the glorious possibilities of immortal man, forever unlimited by the mortal senses,'' writes Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science. In the next paragraph she continues, ''The eternal Truth destroys what mortals seem to have learned from error, and man's real existence as a child of God comes to light.'' n4

n4 Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, pp. 288-289.

Divine Love is our Shepherd. He will show us what to do if we will but be obedient to His law and love Him with all our heart, soul, and mind. DAILY BIBLE VERSE Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding Proverbs 3:5