Article February 6, 1909 Issue

GOD'S OPPORTUNITY

SAMUEL GREENWOOD

The familiar saying, that "man's extremity is God's opportunity," expresses a truth which should stimulate mankind to a livelier examination of their position and their mental conditions. The divine presence is not humanly recognized or appreciated except as place is made for it, even as light cannot enter and illumine one's house unless there is an opening. As absolute Truth, God is ever present, and where God is "there is no need"; but human consciousness rests upon the belief that God is not ever present, and the truth of God's allness can permeate and destroy that belief only as it finds opportunity. As Christians, working out our salvation from a sense of evil, we may well ask ourselves what opportunity God finds in us, or how we can expect the Christ to enter and redeem our thought unless it is unreservedly opened to Truth.

Human need comprises many and varying conditions. The sick and suffering call for harmony and peace: the victims of sin cry out against the misery that results therefrom; the poor and the unfortunate suffer from lack of food and comfort. What opportunity do these give to God, from whom alone permanent help can come? How gladly do they turn from the errors that enslave, to welcome the truth that makes free? Where do we stand in this category,—we who still struggle with a sense of error's reality, and who are discouraged at times over slow progress? How much room does God find in our thoughts and affections? How large a place do material pleasure, ambition, business, etc., occupy in our consciousness? The difficulty with us may be that we are not ready to see our extremity; in other words, we are not quite through with the material world. We think it still holds pleasure for us, that material things can add to our joy, that "mortal mind" has yet some intelligence apart from God. We have not reached the point where the "prince of this world" finds nothing in us. We do not recognize that there is no help or joy or gain or good in anything but God. If these things are so, we are not giving God the opportunity to become All-in-all to us. How can we honestly ask God to do more for us than we are permitting Him? How can we expect the truth to liberate our thought, if our thought is closed against it?

The sufferer who asks help from Christian Science may think that his consent to be treated is all the opportunity God needs to heal him: or that so long as the practitioner is willing to treat him and he is willing to pay the money price, he is under no other obligation except to receive the benefit. The Christian Scientist cannot lessen God's requirements, or abrogate one point of His law, however hard he may work to effect the patient's healing. God says to mortal man, "Give me thine heart;" that is, turn away from all that is unlike God, and have no other hope or faith or trust. When one reaches his extremity he knows there is nothing for him but God, and he desires nothing else. Are we giving God such an opportunity? or do we love aught else than good? The desire for physical health does not necessarily include the desire to forsake the errors that underlie the sense of disease. While one clings to wrong thoughts, and seeks to be rid only of the sufferings that result from them, he has not reached the point where he is ready to be healed by God in God's way. Human extremity is expressed, not so much by the physical sense of need, as by the moral and spiritual sense of need. It is the point where the human reaches the willingness to give up itself and grasp the divine.

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