All night long

I awoke at 4 o'clock one morning with an answer that spoke directly to my need. Earlier that day I'd been wrestling over some decisions I needed to make. Suddenly these words of the Apostle Paul came to mind: "I fear, lest by any means, as the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtilty, so your minds should be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ" (II Cor. 11:3).

I was immediately wide awake. There, in the stillness of the night, looking out of my bedroom skylight at the Big Dipper, I felt the harmony of the universe often forgotten in the noise of the day. I realized that lately I had become so wrapped up in the complexities of various issues that I had strayed from the simplicity of a childlike trust that God is running my life.

How good of God to have sent me this message, I thought. I vowed to accept the simplicity of answers today, not to labor over anything more than necessary, to accept God's guidance and my own God-given intelligence, and not to indulge in worry, doubt, or confusion. Peace flooded over me.

At that moment, a resolution to a problem regarding our family business popped into thought. The day before, I'd felt confused about this problem, but now the course we should take spelled itself out clearly.

Just then I was amazed to see the lights of a plane weaving its way through the points of the Big Dipper, and I realized how that pilot has to be bright and alert, even in the middle of the night. Yet it was clear to me that the intelligence guiding that plane came from a source even outside the pilot - from the one divine Mind governing all.

Then it dawned on me that in the space of five minutes, I had witnessed four examples of intelligence in action, right when most of my part of the world was still asleep: the quotation from the Bible speaking directly to my need; the answer to a business problem; a pilot flying on course; and, most wondrously of all, the stars of a constellation held perfectly in place in the heavens.

It was dark, but the light of divine intelligence - the Love that created the universe - was going on.

Intelligence, I glimpsed, was the key to the order of the universe and the antidote, in fact, to any kind of disorder. No disorder could be a part of the reality of God's universe because it was completely unintelligent. God never created chaos. He created everything spiritually and everything "very good," Genesis 1 assures us. He created man "in the image and likeness" of Himself, Spirit, thus ensuring that His child was not subject to destruction or darkness.

In God's universe there is no "night." My 4 a.m. glimpses illustrated that fact. God fills all space. So there is no spot, no time, no condition, where God's intelligence is not there, governing His creation in an orderly way.

This assures us that we can rebel against any disorder or lack of intelligent action. Though it may appear otherwise, there is right action going on all "night" long. "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mary Baker Eddy puts it this way: "Whatever is governed by God, is never for an instant deprived of the light and might of intelligence and Life" (page 215).

I remembered once when a similar realization had brought instantaneous relief from pain resulting from being stung by a jellyfish. I'd been berating myself for being so thoughtless as to have stepped on this jellyfish while walking on the beach. And also, interestingly, for being somewhat thoughtless toward a relative I had been walking with at that moment. No! came the realization, there is no chaos in God's universe, and no thoughtless acton. No thoughtless creation, and no thoughtless nature. That stopped the pain and healed the sting.

In all kinds of darkness, God, the light of Truth, is there - awake and watching. As the Psalmist said, "He will not suffer thy foot to be moved: he that keepeth thee will not slumber" (121:3).

I got out of bed that early morning to record all these realizations that I'd had while looking out at the night sky. And when the first beams of daylight shone through the window, I knew better than ever that what I was seeing was evidence of the spiritual intelligence that has the potential to permeate even thought that seems impenetrable.

In our prayers for our family and for the world, we can acknowledge that this intelligence is a universal, ever-conscious force. Wisdom is speaking itself all night long - and God's children, worldwide, are able to hear the voice of their Father-Mother.