God's unfailing care
It was a bitterly cold day; snow was predicted. I was on my way home after doing an errand for a friend. When I turned onto the busy road alongside the river I realized that one of my rear tires was flat. I pulled over to the side, wondering what to do.
I didn't think I could tackle changing the tire myself, and there was no public telephone near. I decided to see if I could wave down one of the many passing cars and get the driver to ask a service station some two miles down the road to send a mechanic.
The first two cars ignored my signals. The third, a rather battered small car, stopped. The driver was a young man in jogging clothes.
When he saw what had happened, he said without hesitation that he would change the tire himself. Not only did he do so, but he insisted that I sit in the car while he worked so I could keep warm.
Was that just an isolated incident of good neighborliness? That in itself would have been comforting and reassuring at a time when there is much talk of people not caring anymore, being so self-absorbed that they ignore their neighbors' needs.
But for me there was something there of much deeper significance.
For several days I had been pondering the nature of God as infinite Love and what this means for mankind.
In the Bible, Jeremiah depicts God as assuring His people: "Yea, I have loved thee with an everlasting love: therefore with lovingkindness have I drawn thee." n1 God's live is not an abstract thing to be contemplated from afar. It is a vital, all-powerful force or law, which we can expect to see manifested in countless ways.
n1 Jeremiah 31:3
To me the young man's kindness on that cold day on the riverbank was not only human goodness but concrete evidence of God's inexhaustible love and evercontemporary help. Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, writes, "Divine Love always has met and always will meet every human need. n2
n2 Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures,m p. 494.
Christ Jesus proved the effectiveness of God's love when he healed physical troubles and restored meaning to people's lives. The activity of the Christ, Truth, the divine influence for good that Jesus lived, is just as potent today as it was in his time.
Anyone perceiving the fact of God's great "lovingkindness" cannot limit his prayers to his own well-being, but must extend them to include all mankind. In the measure that he does, he will see evidence of divine Lovehs "unfailing care, " healing lack, sorrow, and suffering.
No situation, however desperate, is beyond the reach of divine Love. God is the only power. His love is always there to help. DAILY BIBLE VERSE Withhold not thou thy tender mercies from me, O Lord: le thy lovingkindness and thy truth continually preserve me. Psalms 40:11