Drought conditions and earnest prayer
Even where we face large-scale challenges, it’s possible to see God’s law of harmony in action.
While on vacation last August, I drove across Texas, which has been struck with severe drought conditions for the past several months. As I drove through the lower Panhandle, it was even hotter than when I had left Dallas, where I live. One service station could not let me use their restroom because they didn’t have enough water.
I have had many physical healings through the study of Christian Science, and at the heart of them is always a spiritualization of thought. In other words, they have brought about a deeper understanding of the spiritual reality that God governs the universe. And because God is the entirely good, infinite Spirit, all that He creates is spiritual and reflects the perfect harmony of the Divine.
As we come to realize this more fully, even when circumstances seem otherwise, the spiritual fact of universal divine harmony becomes more apparent. And the spiritual harmony that exists in one place is the result of a universal law that reliably produces harmony everywhere. So I decided to consider the drought situation from a spiritual perspective.
When we are facing a problem, such as drought, it may seem that there is something wrong with God’s creation that must be fixed. But did God design His creation with built-in hardships? No. Mary Baker Eddy’s “Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures” describes as “the eternal wonder” the fact “that infinite space is peopled with God’s ideas, reflecting Him in countless spiritual forms” (p. 503). Drought is a suggestion of limitation and lack, a contradiction of reality, which is forever spiritual and good.
Asking God for rain isn’t what healing prayer is all about. Instead, it’s about understanding God as divine Love, infinite Mind. God’s creation expresses God, everywhere and in every way. You and I and the universe are God’s knowing of His own goodness and perfection. Creation is spiritual and perfect because the creator is perfect Spirit.
The fundamental lie of drought is that weather conditions constitute a power that challenges and usurps God’s supremacy, and that we have to submit to this as corporeal beings who are subject to matter. Rather than focus on a material problem (lack of rain) or material relief (rain), we can know the oneness of God and man as divine, infinite Principle and idea – God and His spiritual creation.
The only suffering is from the belief that discord can be real. Neither disease nor drought has any reality. The effect of drought is just the false belief that drought can be real. So our target is the belief, and the need is for a change of thought. Now we have drought right where we can abolish it.
Especially where drought seems most real and most damaging, here is where our unwavering stand for the supremacy of God, good, is most needed and most powerful.
After I returned home from vacation, I prayed with these thoughts. As I prayed, the sky became overcast and it began to rain. Very soon the temperature had dropped by 30 degrees and there was a wonderful downpour, which had not been forecast. According to local meteorologists, this brought some much-needed, if temporary, relief.
What happened? Did I make it rain? No. The effect of Christian Science is to reveal the universal harmony that is already true. What more do we need? The treatment that corrects a problem brings to light the evidence of God’s harmonious creation. This is the activity of the Christ, or Truth. Mrs. Eddy writes, “The divine Principle of healing is proved in the personal experience of any sincere seeker of Truth” (Science and Health, p. x).
Christian Science doesn’t conjure up laws that don’t already exist. God’s law is always in operation. Discord is the belief that God’s law could falter or fail or that it is absent or designed to punish us. The truth is that God’s law is never dormant, never faulty, never absent, always good. The beauty of Christian Science is that it demonstrates this fact. We need only apply this law of universal harmony in our own experience day by day, and we will see its evidence in our lives.
Adapted from an article published on sentinel.christianscience.com, Jan. 12, 2023.