God's Ever-Presence
MANY people would agree that it's easy to think of God's goodness when looking upon the beauty of a field of wildflowers, a snow-capped mountain, or a swaying field of wheat bending with the breeze. But how often do we see God expressed in each other and within our own lives? Too often we accept hatred, discord, anger, dismay, death, as inescapable parts of our lives. And then we may wonder: Is God here? Can He help? Does He even care?
Christian Science teaches the goodness, omnipresence, and omnipotence of God. It proclaims God's care for His child, man. It defends man's innate perfection and God's ability to govern His perfect creation. On this basis, Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, confidently assures us of God's goodness and power in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures. She poses the question "Are we irreverent towards sin, or imputing too much power to God, when we ascribe to Him almight y Life and Love? And she continues: "I deny His cooperation with evil, because I desire to have no faith in evil or in any power but God, good.
God is unchanging good. He does not do more because we've prayed, nor does He take good away if we haven't prayed. God presence is felt when we pray. And prayer to God gives us a better understanding of His goodness and enables us to be obedient to His will.
God is Spirit. He knows only the reality of His own, wholly spiritual creation. He knows only Himself and man, made in His image, spiritual and perfect. And this knowledge precludes inharmony of any kind. God doesn't need to know material circumstances in order to heal--but we need to learn more of God and of His idea, man, as already perfect and complete, in order to be healed. Becoming spiritually conscious of God's goodness, love, and care, and of man's perfection as His likeness, we see more goodness
expressed in our experience. This is what changes our lives and harmonizes our experience.
God made man--our genuine, spiritual identity--whole, harmonious, and happy. The spiritual law that governs God's idea, man, governs every aspect of man's experience. God is seen and felt, for example, through man's expression of love, peace, and joy. Searching for and finding God in this way shows us the importance of Christ Jesus' affirmation in the Lord's Prayer: "Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven. Mrs. Eddy's spiritual interpretation of this passage in Science and Health assures us of God 's presence and power. She writes: "Enable us to know,-- as in heaven, so on earth,--God is omnipotent, supreme. Our own prayers can express our deep desire to feel God's ever-presence by asking: "Enable me to know God and man aright; to know and understand how God made man and how He loves man; to know, to feel, God's presence, His goodness, His care. Enable me to know that God governs man, and that I am governed by God. And enable me to know `God is omnipotent, supreme.'
God would not be God if He were not all-powerful, omnipotent. If there could be a situation where God were impotent, then there could be a situation in which inharmony, injustice, discord, and decay could thrive without being destroyed. But God is never less than--or other than--God, infinite good.
We can begin to acknowledge the omnipotence, omnipresence, and goodness of God right now. And we can begin to see that He never created an opposite of Himself, an opposite of good. Therefore evil, inharmonious circumstances, are not founded, maintained, or sustained by God. His ever-presence precludes inharmony, and we find Him always available.