Available resources

Have you ever hurriedly balanced your checkbook and been surprised to end up with a smaller amount than you expected? Perhaps fear set in, and you even curtailed some planned activities to adjust to the diminished resources. Yet later you discovered that you simply had forgotten to write down a deposit and that in fact the funds were available all along! Your fears were merely a response to an inaccurate perception.

This simple miscalculation provides an illustration worth examining. Could it be that right at this moment there are resources available, universally, that have not been perceived? If we are facing individual financial strains, are we responding to an error and basing our daily decisions on an inaccurate perception? Is it possible that what we really need individually as well as universally is a radical trust in, and realization of, God's constant provision?

Throughout the Bible, spiritually minded individuals glimpsed something of an ever-available divine law of good. They trusted and responded to God's omnipresent provision even when their friends could only see limitation. For example, when the prophet Elisha was approached by a woman who was having desperate financial problems, he was evidently aware of God's immediately available resources. She fearfully perceived her one remaining pot of oil as an insurmountable limitation. But Elisha perceived God's unlimited goodness and was able to prove it. The oil was multiplied, and many vessels were filled. The Bible states, ''And the oil stayed.'' n1 STn1 II Kings 4:6.

When the disciples reported a food shortage, Christ Jesus perceived and proved God's immediate resources, and so he was able to feed the multitudes. God's abundant provision was, to Jesus, a present reality.

We too can demonstrate the availability of spiritual resources. We can learn to correct the limited perception of man as a poor, struggling mortal through an understanding of the Biblical truth that man is God's image, the immortal reflection of His infinitely good nature. As God's reflection, man has a divine inheritance. God is continually supplying him with all that he needs - and this is divine law.

I once had a very special opportunity to demonstrate God's law of good. I had moved to a new city, to new employment, and found an unfurnished apartment. Since I had no furniture and had not received my first paycheck, I spent the first night sleeping on the floor.

The next morning I decided to stop all calculations as to how to come up with money to buy furniture. I determined, instead, to trust the infinite, divine source of all good. I realized that God, my heavenly Father, was perfectly capable of immediately providing me with exactly what I needed. A statement by Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, was particularly reassuring. Referring to God as Soul, she explains, ''Soul has infinite resources with which to bless mankind, and happiness would be more readily attained and would be more secure in our keeping, if sought in Soul.'' n 2

n2 Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 60.

That afternoon I went to a tennis tournament and sat by a friendly-looking woman. We had just begun to chat when a new friend walked up and asked me if I had moved into my new apartment. I laughed and said, ''Yes, but there was nothing to move in!''

The woman next to me delightfully exclaimed: ''You know, my husband and I are moving across the country at the end of this week, and we don't want to move all our furniture. We've been trying to find someone who could use what we don't need. You may have our furniture!''

Within two days my new home was complete, with furniture perfectly suited for the entire apartment!

We need not shut ourselves off from available good because of an inaccurate perception of God and man. We can discover that His resources are lovingly given and are immediately available to all. We can prove this today and help mankind as a whole to better recognize God's impartial care and the practicality of divine law. What a privilege! DAILY BIBLE VERSE I will give thee . . . hidden riches of secret places. Isaiah 45:3