Article June 7, 1947 Issue

The Joy of Trusting God's Plan

MICHAEL ST. JOHN O'CARROLL

How wise are the words of the Apostle James addressed to those intent on human planning (James 4:15), "For that ye ought to say, If the Lord will, we shall live, and do this, or that." Many times we too are tempted to outline the kind of work we should like to do and the place we should wish to be in, but when our thinking is based on human will rarely do we find ourselves in the place or doing the work best suited to us.

In Christian Science we learn that God has a plan for each one of His children, and that the real selfhood of each one of us has its place in this plan. In order to bring this right place into evidence we have to pray with Jesus, "Father, ... not my will, but thine be done." Thus we invoke the divine and ever-present law which begins to bring into evidence in human experience God's perfect plan for each one of us. Since this is the plan of divine Love and infinite intelligence, it unfolds for us immeasurably more good than anything of our own devising, and furthermore, since it is the plan of omnipresence and omnipotence, we can trustfully depend upon its omniaction.

In these days of change and uncertainty it is encouraging and withal reassuring to look back on our experiences and see how the divine plan has proved itself to be the only plan for us, because what we can prove in our own experience when we work individually in Christian Science, we can demonstrate for the world at large when we fulfill our duties as world citizens and work collectively for peace. How comforting are the words of the prophet Jeremiah, taken from a little-known translation of the Bible (Jer. 29:11).

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