An answer to financial instability
A Christian Science perspective on daily life
For a number of years I prayed diligently for a better sense of supply while my husband invested in business ventures that drained what I considered to be "our" money.
He kept reassuring me that the present investment he was considering could yield big returns. I tried to be supportive of these endeavors, all the while fighting a feeling of financial betrayal as I saw our money dwindling away. We had a home and three children and had already remortgaged our house to finance an unsuccessful business venture.
The final blow came when, in an effort to recoup some of his losses, he invested in futures, which offer no guarantees and the possibility of losing it all. It finally dawned on me that I was living with a gambler. Hoping to "win big," he instead lost the remainder of our savings.
Things looked pretty grim. The deep love I felt for my husband was being undermined by actions that threatened our whole family's well-being. After the children were on their own, this financial mismanagement became the reason that the marriage dissolved.
In the meantime, I'd started working to help pay the bills. I continued to pray with this comforting thought from the writings of Mary Baker Eddy: "God gives you His spiritual ideas, and in turn, they give you daily supplies. Never ask for to-morrow: it is enough that 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). I knew through familiarity with her writings that she had proved in her own life the truth of these words, and I took comfort in that assurance.
I was beginning to see that supply and demand are not a seesaw. The need might seem to be for more of whatever we perceive is lacking in our life, but the demand is to acknowledge the ever-present abundance here and now of what God is supplying.
Recognizing a demand as spiritual gives us the correct premise for addressing it. As we reason from a God-created and God-maintained base, our prayers move us to more open acceptance of what God is providing in our present experience. Whatever the human demand is, it can be overridden by responding to the imperative to acknowledge the ever- presence of God, establishing through prayer His governance of our lives.
Seeing that the demand is never for something that doesn't exist, I began to recognize more fully what does exist in the ever-presence of God's all-encompassing love.
When I was offered a job in another city at a higher rate of pay, which included a pension and an opportunity to invest a percentage of my earnings in an individual retirement account, I gratefully accepted. I was able to set aside the maximum amount allowed for the 12 years I worked there, without feeling any lack. I was very grateful for this generous provision granted by my employer. More than a restoration of the "years that the locust hath eaten" (Joel 2:25), it was proof of God's shepherding in my experience.
Sometimes our need for supply looms large, but God's abundant blessings far exceed any limited human views we might entertain as to how those needs are going to be met. The real need is to recognize ourselves as active reflections of an infinite source of good.
As spiritual expressions of the one Father-Mother God, we are complete. Claiming and demonstrating our completeness fills the chinks of fearful thinking with the solid facts of divine being where there is no outside to God's allness. This is a demand we can joyously meet on God's terms and reap the results.