God's Perfect Guidance

MARIA SCHLOZ

It is a wonderful experience to be imbued with the feeling that we are under God's government and constant guidance. No doubt it was more or less emphatically pointed out in our childhood that we should always be led by His hand; and we can remember that we often had the desire to be led by the Good Shepherd to the green pastures of divine Love. But even this beautiful thought did not possess the power to enable us to feel Love's guidance continually, because it was not founded upon scientific understanding of God's nature. Our perception is really blessed only when upheld by intelligent spiritual understanding. Our revered Leader, Mary Baker Eddy, accomplished an inestimable service for us all in elucidating divine guidance as an eternal, scientific fact—as the law of Life. Only as we understand this are we able to join in the jubilation of the twenty-third psalm, "The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want."

Shall we not, therefore, endeavor to understand the blessedness of divine guidance? Mrs. Eddy says in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 361), "As a drop of water is one with the ocean, a ray of light one with the sun, even so God and man, Father and son, are one in being." Could a single drop of the ocean, or a wave, be any different in quality from the ocean itself? In the same manner a ray of the sun shares the sun's qualities, manifesting light. These may be called symbols of the direct relationship of man to God. As soon as we gratefully acknowledge this, we understand to a certain extent man's unity with God, and may begin to experience in daily life the guidance of highest divine wisdom. Whether we desire it or not, whether we are conscious of it or not, as God's children we are under God's constant guidance.

This guidance does not, however, always seem to be obvious. Often one seems to see only that which is ungodlike and inharmonious. Has God perchance withdrawn His hand, and is His guidance not meant for us? Let us remember the parable of the prodigal son: the father's love and guidance were always there, even when the son was feeding the swine; but the latter's material concept of life, his ingratitude, obstinacy, sensuality, worldliness, and fear prevented him from considering that living in his father's house was a blessing. These suggestions had apparently caused him to separate himself from his father; but when the pains of sense awakened a feeling of homesickness, he remembered his father's love and said, "I will arise and go to my father."

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