True agency

Agency. It’s a word we hear more and more to counter the impression that someone is in a hopeless situation, a passive victim of circumstances beyond their control. Agency means empowerment, the ability to impact a situation or achieve an end. Aspects of agency are often highlighted as a response to difficult, even heart-wrenching events.

Where does agency come from? Perhaps we begin to experience it as an inner confidence that good is always possible and that progress can happen anywhere in the world. While this is a helpful outlook, when left to our own resources, even the best human efforts can fall short, leaving a deeper sense of failure and disappointment instead of resilience.

So how can we reliably find the empowerment we need?

There are encouraging examples in the Bible. Agency is not a new concept. It’s centuries old. I love the stories of people who discovered their own agency when they turned to God, who is infinite, all-encompassing Spirit.

One unnamed widow faced overwhelming debts. Her creditor was about to enslave her two sons as compensation. As a woman in that society, she had very few rights, no recourse, no social safety net. Her late husband had served the prophet Elisha, so out of desperation, she seeks Elisha out.

Instead of offering his own help, this man of God rather startlingly asks her what she has in her own house. Only a pot of olive oil, she replies. A pitiful declaration of her poverty.

It’s at this point that Elisha affirms her agency – her own active role – in resolving her plight. He tells her to borrow from her neighbors as many empty pots as possible, and then in the privacy of her home to pour out the oil from her own pot into the others. As she does, the oil keeps flowing until everything is filled – leaving the woman with an abundance to sell to eliminate the debt and enough left over for her family to live off of (see II Kings 4:1-7).

I’ve often admired what it took for this woman to accept the prophet’s counsel. The account doesn’t get into that, but it’s not hard to imagine that it may have taken courage to ask neighbors for these pots, perhaps facing unsolicited comments and skepticism. And a degree of faith that this unfathomable action would bring about a practical resolution.

Central to all of this is the nature of God as boundless Love, more than equal to every human need, and always present in every situation. Divine Love, being limitless, reigns supreme. Problems have no place in divine Love, and therefore don’t have the staying power they may seem to.

Yes, God is with us – and empowering us to find the courage and faith already within us as children of divine Spirit, wholly spiritual, expressing God’s own nature. As we claim this relationship and strive to understand it better, we find release from whatever type of overwhelming situations we may face.

Once, incapacitated by a severe migraine, I was unable to do anything more than lie quietly on a bed. But I had immediate deadlines to meet and no one else was equipped to help with them. I couldn’t read or talk or listen to anything. I couldn’t even care for myself.

“But,” the thought came, “I can pray.” I had agency for that. So I opened my thought to all that God is as infinite Love, and all that this Love is doing to care for its entire creation. It became clear to me that I was included in that unfailing care. And, perhaps like the widow of so long ago, I felt an outpouring of grace enveloping me. Within a few minutes, I was up, fully freed of the pain, and energized to complete the work ahead of me.

This quick release from physical debility was a small illustration of the power of turning to the spiritual source of all true agency. Mary Baker Eddy, who founded The Christian Science Monitor, wrote encouragingly, “... divine Love is an ever-present help; and if you wait, never doubting, you will have all you need every moment” (“Miscellaneous Writings 1883-1896,” p. 307). What God is and does empowers us to transcend human limits and limitations.