Help for God's creatures, from His creation
A Christian Science perspective.
The farm dog went missing, so the owner grew anxious and mounted a search party. The search began at twilight and dragged on through most of the night. Not long before dawn, they located the dog. He had tucked himself under a nearby bridge. But the real surprise for the search party was an additional and unexpected find. Beneath that bridge the pooch had wrapped himself around an abandoned 2-week-old infant. A human baby. In doing so the dog had kept the infant warm, and therefore kept him alive. At the same time, the dog had shielded the infant from a menagerie of night creatures not inclined to befriend humans of any size. At last report, both dog and baby were doing well and were expected to make full recoveries (Ghana News Agency, June 8, 2012).
When you come across a heartwarming happy ending like that, it is easy to wonder what impels a dog or, for that matter, a person – to do such a caring act. What stirs one to make the extra effort, to go the additional mile? Is it instinct, or something much more?
Perhaps there was something beyond the ordinary at work in that story above. Something spiritually tangible was shaping events. Call it “the right hand of the Lord” (Psalms 118:16). Call it the presence and power of the heavenly Creator of us all. Call it divine Love in action. The point is, the Almighty was on the scene. He always is. His presence is not passive. The divine action accompanying His presence impels right action on our part. It impels right action on the part of each one of God’s creatures. This activity is not random, not hit or miss. It is precise, specific, exact. That is because there is a divine Science of Love, a law of God. When the presence of this law is realized in prayer and in all its divine activity, this law has a transforming impact on thought and therefore on events.
It is natural for people to pray. And it is natural for all of God’s creatures to respond to divine direction.
In the presence of such prayer and listening, negative physical circumstances adjust for the better, and troubles begin to fade out. This occurs as negative mental states – such as fear, doubt, discouragement – yield to the healing action of divine Love. Their nothingness is exposed. Physical “laws” of health that seem to foreshadow illness, begin to retreat. They get rewritten as having less and less power, and look less and less like law at all.
The true spiritual law, or Science, within which humans are moved to act in caring and compassionate ways, is also the mental and spiritual realm within which animals live and move. Again, the law of God, the Science of Love, the truth of being, is the realm within which right action takes place. “All of God’s creatures, moving in the harmony of Science, are harmless, useful, indestructible.” (That’s a statement by Monitor founder Mary Baker Eddy, and appears in her primary work on Christian Science, “Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures,” p. 514.)
Don’t be surprised if events like the one described in that news story above grow more common. Even if others don’t pause to give God the credit, you can thank Him more faithfully, praise Him more consistently, love Him more purely. That positions you to witness still more acts of deliverance, more proofs of Love’s care for His creation.
Could it be that one of God’s creatures, such as a farm dog, would serve as the means through which divine Love reaches and blesses its creation? Could it be that there is a scientific underpinning to the harmony, harmlessness, usefulness, and indestructibility of God’s creatures? To prayerfully realize this brings nearer the time when another saving below-the-bridge mission successfully takes place.
Adapted from the Christian Science Sentinel.