The other day driving back from North Carolina, I happened to see a billboard with this message: "In an emergency, experience counts." What it referred to was a health care group. But the phrase stuck with me, and being a student of Christian Science, very naturally led to thoughts of God's help that is always with us.
Sometimes people, when learning that I'm a Christian Scientist and rely on God for deliverance, will ask, "But could you trust God's help in an emergency?"My answer to that is always "yes," because I've experienced God's everpresent intervention in many and varied ways in my life. Who can imagine One more experienced than God Almighty?
One of the many passages throughout the Bible that reveal God as the tender, watchful guardian of all is, "God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.. (Psalm 46:1) This has divine truth has come to my aid many times over the years. It can come to yours, too. One doesn't have to panic in emergencies, or accept as final the evidence of accident, injury, or illness. Instead, he or she can rely on God's help with confidence and success.
And Christ Jesus who was ever conscious of God's unfailing care for His children, said: "He that sent me is with me: the Father hath not left me alone." (John 8:29) God's constant love and support are still at hand for all who yearn for heavenly help.
Many who have felt alone and afraid before the challenges that come up in everyday life have found solace, support, and healing through the study of Christian Science. Mary Baker Eddy,the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, writes in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures (p.332): "Father-Mother is the name for Deity, which indicates His tender relationship to His spiritual creation. As the apostle expressed it: "For we are also His offspring.'"
I've often marveled that the creator of the universe, the Father of all things, is our Father who not only loves us unconditionally, but is always with us in every circumstance. It is due to the teachings of Christian Science that I have this spiritual conviction, it must be said.
My religion shows that since man is God's offspring, His image and likeness, as the Bible reveals, man is spiritual and perfect, continuously reflecting the Father's love and care. This spiritual identity, the true selfhood of us all, is not helpless before the mortal claims of accident, injury, illness. These erroneous beliefs, which seem so real to the unenlightened thought, stem from ignorance of man's inseparable relationship to God, divine Love, and are corrected by spiritual understanding.
Mortal suffering is an illusion of the physical senses, a lie about God's perfect creation. It is like the bad dream a child has at night--frightening to him, yet not real to the loved one awake at his side. And what comfort the child feels when he wakes and sees that he is not alone, and there is nothing to fear.
When, through spiritual understanding, one arouses himself from the mortal dream of life in matter to the reality of the truth of spiritual being, he experiences the sense of security that comes to one who has a knowledge of spiritual reality.
This knowledge our great Master obviously had. It is encouraging to note that when Jesus was himself confronted with an emergency situation (an angry crowd had led him to the top of a hill to throw him off), "he passing through the midst of them went his way." (This is from Luke 4:30)
As we gain an approximation of that rocklike spiritual recognition Jesus had that the loving Parent of us all is always caring for His children, we're empowered to demonstrate dominion in emergencies. It is divine fact that no situation which arises, whether it concerns the well-being of ourselves or those we love, is beyond God's omnipotent help.
