Article March 18, 1967 Issue

Unfoldment in the Wilderness

GERALD STANWELL

How often we have sighed at a seeming lack of progress or been tempted to believe that some adverse circumstance had no right to appear in our experience! But if we have been trying sincerely to do the right thing, have we not invariably emerged from the seemingly adverse experience with a renewed awareness that, as Paul expressed it, "All things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose"?^{Rom. 8:28;}

At times we may be tempted to question some of the conditions that come under the title of "all things." They appear too difficult and unjust, or quite contrary to our comparatively limited concept of what should happen. At other times we may feel that things are working out harmoniously, but self-will in others may try to insist that we should make more progress, that we are not in our right place, and so on. While discontent with complacency serves its purpose, fretting over every detail of that working together for good which Mind directs is a hindrance more than a help.

Such fretting was typical of the early Israelites' experience both before they were delivered from the bondage in Egypt and in the wilderness. Many of them did not understand that the wilderness was indeed part of their liberation and therefore part of Love's working things out for good. By resenting their wilderness experience, they prolonged their emergence from it. Ezekiel records the words of the Lord: "They rebelled against me, and would not hearken unto me. ... I caused them to go forth out of the land of Egypt, and brought them into the wilderness. And I gave them my statutes, and shewed them my judgments, which if a man do, he shall even live in them. ... But the house of Israel rebelled against me in the wilderness."^{Ezek. 20:8–13;} Ezekiel stated that God spared them again and again in spite of repeated obstinacy and unteachableness.