God's reign can end drought
If humanity, instead of waiting for rain to fall from the sky, would establish the reign of God's goodness within, damaging droughts would end. An important way to establish this reign of God's goodness in our affairs is to understand and live the Scriptural fact that God's creation, including man, is wholly good. n1
n1 See Genesis 1:31
The teachings of Christian Science show how to translate this droughtless good that belongs to God's immortal offspring into practical effects. As we hold our outlook, our hoping, our knowing, our doing, in accord with man's spiritual status -- man created in God's image and likeness -- we place ourselves consciously under God's law of harmony, which holds no place for evil. This law becomes a law for human events.
Mankind somewhat perceives this. But reasoning generally from effect instead of from deific cause, we most often accept the false testimony of the physical senses as authentic. We even say that disasters such as droughts are acts of God, perhaps retributive ones visited upon us for our sins. But if we hold God responsible, we imply that He who created only good could become a blind, irrational, suicidal force, destroying through drought and starvation His own creation.
Christian Science reverses such faulty reasoning. It inspires us to look beyond illusory, material effects. As we do, we discern something of God's perfect creation functioning eternally in harmony, productivity, abundance.
The rain and grass for which humanity prays are dependent upon something even more fundamental than nature's seasonal replenishing. The Bible tells us that God made "every plant of the field before it was in the earth." n2
n2 Genesis 2:5
Elucidating this Biblical statement, Mary Baker Eddy n3 writes in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures,m "Here is the emphatic declaration that God creates all through mind, not through matter, -- that the plant grows, not because of seed or soil, but because growth is the eternal mandate of Mind." n4
n3 Mrs. Eddy is the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science;
n4 Science and Health,m p. 520
Recognizing that under this mandate the rain falls and the grass grows, humanity would begin to lose its fear either of excessive rain or of drought. Christ Jesus indicated that accepting God's goodness, trusting wholly in His care, would always meet the human need.
Elijah, too, illustrated this fact. During a drought the prophet went to zarephath. God had told him a widow there would feed him. The woman, despite the fact that she had enough food only for herself and her son, shared her supply with the man of God. He urged her to do so, in fact, encouraging her to replace fear with an awareness of the reign of God and His ever-available goodness. She did as he instructed, and her limited supply was immediately increased without her waiting for rain or for seed to grow."She, and he, and her house, did eat many days." n5
n5 See I Kings 17:8-16.
Knowing and living by the fact that God alone controls the universe, we can learn to reject and reverse the hypnotic expectation of drought and devastation.We can instead trust completely in the reign of God's continuing goodness. DAILY BIBLE VERSE Praise waiteth for thee, O God, in Sion . . . . Thou Visitest the earth, and waterest it: thou greatly enrichest it with the river of God, which is full of water: thou preparest them corn, when thou hast so provided for it. Thou waterest the ridges thereof abundantly: thou settlest the furrows thereof: thou makest it soft with showers: thou blessest the springing thereof. Thou crownest the year with thy goodness; and thy paths dro p fatness. Psalms 65:1, 9-11