Article August 5, 1911 Issue

"JEHOVAH-JIREH"

MARY L. CUMMINS.

WHEN considering the question of supply for a dear friend, soon after coming into Christian Science, the story of the trial of Abraham's faith came to the writer with great helpfulness. In this account we read that the angel of the Lord called to Abraham, when Isaac had been placed upon the hastily built altar, "Lay not thine hand upon the lad, neither do thou anything unto him." Undoubtedly there came to Abraham then, as never before, the realization of God as a God of love. Isaac, so dear to the earthly father's heart, was still more dear to the all-Father. God did not demand the surrender or relinquishment of any joy or happiness which Love had bestowed. It is more than likely that Abraham entered at that moment into one of those glorious periods of clarified thought and apprehension of the real nature of God which we all have had at some time, and which are some of those "treasures" laid up in the heaven of spiritualized consciousness to which Jesus referred.

The Old Testament story goes on to say that "Abraham lifted up his eyes, and looked, and behold . . . a ram caught in a thicket by his horns." It is very probable that the animal which supplied Abraham's apparent need of the moment was there before he saw it, but it was not until Love had cleared his mental vision that he "lifted up his eyes, and looked" in the right direction. Some such experience as Abraham's becomes ours when through Christian Science we realize that the God whom we have perhaps been faithfully trying to serve for years, as a God of infinite love, is close at hand. (When we realize that those who are near and dear to us are still nearer and dearer to our Father-Mother God, that whether they form part of the home circle or are to material sense far away, we know that they are provided for and cared for, held safe and secure in the one supreme law of Love.

With such realization as this there comes a clarifying of the mental vision, and not infrequently the means of supplying any seeming lack, our own or another's, is found close at hand,—so near, so natural, that its coming in this way never occurred to us until we came to see that good is always near and natural. Then, with Abraham, we are ready to call the name of that place—or experience—"Jehovah-jireh," which means, "The Lord will provide."

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