Solutions Through Prayer
MOST of us, at some time or other, face financial difficulties. I reached such a crunch point a few years ago. A member of my family had been ill and needed nursing care. Out of my slender income I had paid many of the outstanding bills. When I received my monthly bank statement, it indicated that while I was not actually overdrawn, there was only a tiny sum of money to cover expenses until my paycheck came at the end of the next month. Needless to say, the seriousness of the situation hit me hard.
Before panic set in, though, I turned to God in prayer. I knew that true prayer, the prayer Christ Jesus taught, brings answers--answers that are just right for us in any situation. What does this prayer consist of? It acknowledges God's nature as divine Love, ever present and universal; recognizes that He is infinite Mind, upholding all creation. This prayer involves, too, a recognition of man's spiritual nature as the expression of God's being. This means that man always has all good because that is wh at God provides for His creation. A verse from James in the Bible, puts it like this: ``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.
When we turn to God in prayer, we're putting our trust in all that we understand God, divine Love, to be and accepting the fact that man--our genuine, spiritual identity--is His loved child, who expresses and enjoys His goodness. This turning of thought to the spiritual nature of creation quiets worry and enables us to discover specific answers that meet our needs. Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, writes about this kind of prayer in her book Science and Health with Key to
the Scriptures: ``In divine Science, where prayers are mental, all may avail themselves of God as `a very present help in trouble.' Love is impartial and universal in its adaptation and bestowals. It is the open fount which cries, `Ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters.'
I prayed, trustfully acknowledging God's loving care for all His children. I acknowledged that man is always one with his Father-Mother God and, because of this, is always able to feel God's love. This earnest prayer eased my anxiety and brought me confidence that there was a sure, though as yet unthought-of, solution for this cash-flow difficulty.
I had been praying along these lines for about twenty minutes when there was a knock at the door. It was a marketing research agent for electrical appliances. He wanted to know what electrical appliances I had and, on finding that I had very few, invited me to be interviewed by his company, saying that they would pay me for my time. He explained that only eight interviews were being made in my area, and he had selected my house because it looked as though I most probably did not have many modern convenie nces! The money for giving the interview provided food for the next few days. After this I was asked to do some extra work that provided what I needed for the rest of the month.
This experience confirmed for me once again that through prayerfully acknowledging what God is and how He sustains and cares for His expression, man, we can find the answers we need. Never for a moment should we let ourselves be hoodwinked into thinking of ourselves as even temporarily cut off from God, the source of abundant good. Man is forever upheld and blessed by his Father-Mother God. And we can depend on His care.
