Moving at the right moment
Among the more memorable natural features of the California coast are some caves scattered along the water’s edge. Explorers – often in kayaks – plumb the reaches of these caves.
If you’re a first-time explorer, one of the longer caves rewards you with a surprise outcome. You enter the cave at a near opening, and then can exit 100 or so yards away at a far opening. At low tide, however, this feat requires perfect timing on the kayaker’s part. That’s when a set of boulders emerges at one opening as if to block passage. The trick is to wait until a large wave floods through the cave, covering those boulders. That’s the one moment a kayaker can slip through the opening, just above the boulders. Try this a second or so too soon, and the wave may flip your kayak. Try it a second or so too late, and you get hung up on the boulders.
These days, moving at the right moment can mean just about everything. That’s true in so many of life’s endeavors, whether you’re thinking of individuals, of institutions, or even of whole industries. Is this the time to make a major career move? What about selling a home and moving across the country? Should one move his or her retirement savings? Every individual ponders such changes at one time or another. Then, too, entire industries go through times of reevaluation and reassessment. In this economy, should they be moving customer service divisions offshore? Is this the time to phase out the use of steel in manufacturing and move to lighter, stronger materials? The examples, and the uncertainties, could go on and on.
An invaluable but often overlooked first step tends to reduce those uncertainties and impel progress. What would that be?
Prayer. Prayer that understandingly reaches out to the Divine and therefore breaks the paralyzing inertia of fear. Prayer that is rooted in the certainty of God’s presence, and that therefore dislodges uncertainty from one’s thought and outlook. Prayer that turns unreservedly to God as the one divine power, the sole supreme mover, the one perfect knower. This prayer is on the move as it reaches out and up to God, and to all the good that comes from Him. That includes His inspiration and understanding, which foster conviction in the power of good. These never grow stagnant, never freeze over. These are ever unfolding, always active in meeting human needs.
Obstacles to them have no choice but to clear off.
Think of Moses, at God’s directing, leading the children of Israel out of bondage. However, imagine them arriving at the Red Sea only to find it had parted a few weeks earlier. Or that it would not part for another few weeks. Fortunately, the divine power in control of the children of Israel as they journeyed to the sea’s edge was also in control of the sea itself – including when it parted and when it closed. Quite simply, no obstacle, not even a sea, could stand in the way of the divine directive to move.
The power of God is intelligent power. After all, God is pure Mind. And pure Mind is the one source of all movement. And movement impelled by infinitely intelligent Mind never comes too soon or too late. When we come to realize in prayer that this Mind is the one governing presence, it takes hold on the human scene. Changes for the better become reinforced. Changes for the worse fade out. The divine law that forwards perfect timing makes it easier for people in charge to discern when to act, and when to stay put.
Mary Baker Eddy, a lifelong Bible student and consecrated follower of Christ Jesus, discovered the Science, or law, of divine Mind. This Science regulates right movement at right moments. In her primary work, “Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures,” Mrs. Eddy wrote, “Mind is the source of all movement, and there is no inertia to retard or check its perpetual and harmonious action” (p. 283). Nothing stands in the way of this divinely impelled movement. Not even the dispiriting inertia of an economy that has tanked and shows few signs of a rebound. Nor the frustrating inertia from economic data that send mixed signals and generate confusion. Mind is the knower. Mind is the mover. Mind is the inertia-breaking power.
As caring individuals realize the nature and authority of Mind more and more, they are contributing, through prayer, to the solving of problems that demand right action at the right moment. This means that problems – including the kind of planetwide ones we now face – run into good solutions. And that the problems then begin to diminish. And that good answers begin to dawn.
From an editorial in the Christian Science Sentinel.
