Article October 21, 1944 Issue

"Emerge gently"

NORMA D. SENN

One who was in need of employment had been trying to find her place in the business world, and in her anxiety was dashing hither and yon in her haste to find it before the demon of lack suffocated her. But her place was not found in that way. Feeling the need of more enlightenment, this student of Christian Science wrote to a loving, earnest worker. The answer came: "Emerge gently"! This phrase was quoted from a sentence in the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mary Baker Eddy (p. 485), "Emerge gently from matter into Spirit."

She was grateful to receive the advice, and immediately set to work to analyze her thinking. She found that she had been rushing about trying to tell God what to do instead of gently standing by until He told her what to do. She immediately reversed her thoughts, gave up struggling materially, and decided to accept an invitation to spend the summer with a friend at a lake some two hundred miles away. While there she had further opportunity to clear her thought of all anxiety. Shortly thereafter she received a letter offering her a business of her own at terms which made it possible for her to accept.

How futile it is for us to try humanly to outline God's plan for us! This was illustrated in an incident that occurred when the writer was riding with a friend in a heavy rainstorm. The friend had in her possession a purse containing transportation for several persons, together with keys and important papers. When she reached her destination she discovered that the purse was gone. Panicstricken, she gave no thought to God's law of action, but human plans for retracing the ground covered in the rainstorm were made. These plans were carried out; every step of the way was retraced, but to no avail. Suddenly it came to the writer to stop and listen for God's voice, and as soon as the car was brought to a stop, a voice seemed to say, "Look on the running board." Despite the fact that they had gotten in and out of the car several times to look in large puddles of water, and regardless of the heavy downpour of rain, they found the purse intact on the running board. All the confusion and anxiety would have been avoided had divine guidance been sought at once and thought allowed to "emerge gently."

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