Joblessness and God's Help

        Yesterday's Wall Street Journal had an excellent essay from the Republican nominee for Governor of California, Neel Kashkari.  His title is "Brother, Can You Spare a Job?".  I was impressed to read that this man took to the streets with only $40 in his pocket (no credit cards) and trudged off to find work.  He tried one place after another, but finding no job, ended up having to accept meals from a local shelter and sleep on the street.

        This made me think about joblessness from a spiritual standpoint.  Fortunately, whether one's present need is for work or simply for peace of mind concerning the future, help is at hand.

        Christ Jesus was always conscious of God's tender, loving provision for each of His children.  To teach his hearers of God's goodness, Jesus told the parable of the prodigal son, who left his father's house, wasted all his resources, and then returned in what he thought would be disgrace to his father.  Instead of condemning him, his father welcomed him warmly and said (Luke 15:31):  "Son, thou art ever with me, and all that I have is thine."

        Through the study of Christian Science and the spiritual understanding it throws upon the Scriptures, one glimpses the fact that man is God's perfect expression, inseparable from divine Love's eternal care. Therefore one sees that man cannot need anything; he already possesses all good. Our function is to show forth God's attributes in continuous, harmonious activity.  This is our real employment, satisfying and secure. It is work totally unaffected by material beliefs of hard times and is never at the mercy of economic cycles or human laws of supply and demand.

        Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, writes in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures (p. 494), "Divine Love always has met and always will meet every human need."  Many who, through the study of Christian Science, have gained an enlightened understanding of God as tender, unfailing Love, can testify to the truth of this statement.

        My own father was unexpectedly let go from his job at an age generally considered to be too young for retirement but too old for employment with a new firm.  The weeks wore on, and his own efforts to find work were unsuccessful.

        Desperately he looked for help.  My mother, brother, sister and I were all Christian Scientists, and he had witnessed many of our healings over the years.  My mother helped him contact a Christian Science practitioner, who aided him in gaining a better concept of himself as God's beloved child. In their interview the practitioner pointed out man's real being as a spiritual idea of God, divine Mind.  She assured him that he was the recipient of inexhaustible good.  She spoke of his unity with divine Love and told him that as the reflection of God he could not lack anything he needed for happiness, usefulness, satisfaction, and supply.

        As my father listened to the practitioner, his doubt and fear lessened, and he found himself feeling hopeful.  During the days that followed he continued to hold to his understanding of completeness and satisfaction in God and found his thoughts being filled with peace and confidence.  In less than a week's time he located a job that provided happy, rewarding employment.

        Mrs. Eddy writes in The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany" (p. 5), "Wholly apart from this mortal dream, this illusion and delusion of sense, Christian Science comes to reveal man as God's image, His idea, coexistent with Him -- God giving all and man having all that God gives."