Divine Law - Always Active

THE crumbling of the Berlin Wall, the demise of communism in what was once the Soviet Union--such events reassure us that repression, or any form of injustice, ultimately can't stand.A great deal that inflicts injury on mankind does, however, seem to persist, and those who are the victims of injustice might well wonder if God exists or if He cares. Such things as the difficulty the Serbs and the Croats are having in negotiating a workable cease-fire and the recent resurgence of turmoil in the Middle East, including the possibility of armed confrontations in Iraq, may lead one to ask, Why do innocent people sometimes suffer so long at the hands of tyranny? Why doesn't infinite Love pu t a stop to it? These are understandable questions. Yet it could be that the remedy for injustice lies in a different kind of question. For instance, what is God, really? The Bible assures us that God is Love, the supreme lawmaker. And it tells us of the certainty of His just government. The book of Isaiah says, "The Lord is our judge, the Lord is our lawgiver, the Lord is our king; he will save us. It appears that we're living in a material universe apart from God, a universe where evil can carry on unchecked. Yet Christ Jesus taught, according to Luke's Gospel, "There is nothing covered, that shall not be revealed; neither hid, that shall not be known. Sooner or later injustice has to be uncovered and destroyed through the constant action of divine law, because it can have no place in God's creation. God's creation isn't a conglomeration of good and evil, of justice and injustice. In reality, as the Bible teaches, God is perfect Spirit, therefore the true nature of His creation, including man, must be spiritual and perfect. God's creation must express the harmony that characterizes His government. This may seem a far-off impractical ideal, but it's not. It's the basis from which we can pray more effectively, even in the face of evident injustice. It's not that God doesn't do anything about injustice; His law absolutely and eternally excludes it. And as we are more persistent in living and praying from the standpoint of His law, we hasten the demise of all that's sinful and wrong. Through prayer that insists on the supremacy of divine law, that realizes God's wise, loving government of His creation, things do happen. We've seen this in world events of recent times. We see it throughout Biblical history. We see it in individual lives regenerated and healed as a result of prayer alone. We shouldn't, of course, oversimplify the issue. The troubles of individuals and nations are often complex, and upheaval sometimes seems the rule rather than the exception. At such times we might remember the words of the prophet Ezekiel, who represented God as saying, "I will overturn, overturn, overturn, it: and it shall be no more, until he come whose right it is; and I will give it him. And referring to another Biblical passage, Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, writes in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures: "In Isaiah, we read: 'I make peace, and create evil. I the lord do all these things;' but the prophet referred to divine law as stirring up the belief in evil to its utmost, when bringing it to the surface and reducing it to its common denominator, nothingness. The troubles facing humanity continue to be formidable. But divine law is at work, impelling further progress. Our job is to know this, to pray with this conviction. That's what will hasten the actual proof of divine justice.