Article April 22, 1985 Issue

The good soil

SHARON VINCZ ANDREWS

The current world food crisis has prompted many people to give of their time, money, and effort in an attempt to alleviate the suffering brought on by drought and famine in many nations. Scientists from technologically advanced countries are offering hope through agricultural research. Many countries and charitable organizations around the world are united in their purpose to bring hope and sustenance to those who are destitute. While we can certainly be grateful for all these evidences of brotherly love, is there something more we can do as individuals?

As I contemplated this question, I began to see that these humane attempts at solutions and the outpouring of love that underlay them hinted at spiritual answers. Through prayer I began to see more of the complete, understandable, and productive ideas of Spirit, God, that are truly needed for healing.

You might ask, "How can prayer and the resulting spiritual ideas supply concrete aid to starving people?" The first chapter of Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy is specifically devoted to prayer. Here the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science states: "God is Love. Can we ask Him to be more? God is intelligence. Can we inform the infinite Mind of anything He does not already comprehend? ... Shall we plead for more at the open fount, which is pouring forth more than we accept?" On the next page the Christian Science textbook explains, "His work is done, and we have only to avail ourselves of God's rule in order to receive His blessing, which enables us to work out our own salvation." Science and Health, pp. 2-3. Isn't this rule of God stated clearly in the first chapter of Genesis and expounded throughout the Bible? Essentially, this chapter of Genesis says that God created the heavens and the earth, that He made man in His likeness and gave man dominion over all the earth. It tells us that everything He made "was very good." This mandate of God, when deeply and sincerely contemplated in prayer, lifts human thought out of the dry barrenness of mortal concepts about God and man to the spiritual facts of existence.

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