SPEAKER: Have you ever realized that almost everyone does some type of original work, whether it's baking a cake, rearranging furniture, writing an office report, or designing a building? And so most of us have a need of fresh, progressive ideas. But many people feel they lack originality, and still others are afraid they'll run out of ideas sometime. So today we're going to talk about how these needs can be filled.

Our guest is John D. Buchanan, of Towson, Maryland, who works in the field of engineering design. He'll tell of how a spiritual understanding of God has helped him in every need, particularly in connection with his work.

MR. BUCHANAN: For my job, inventiveness and ingenuity certainly are important. That's why I'm so grateful to have gained some understanding of God as divine Mind, unlimited intelligence, and of man's true relationship to Him.

But maybe I'd better go back to the beginning and tell you how I started learning about God and how to pray effectively. It all began when I visited a Christian Science Sunday School for the first time. I was only about ten. The thing that impressed me the most was the explanation of God as good and not the sender of evil and punishment. And so I began going to the Sunday School all the time.

Then I guess it was about two years later that I had a physical healing through complete reliance on prayer. I began having pain in one of my legs. For about a year the pain kept getting worse. It became obvious that one of my legs had stopped growing and was shorter than the other. Even strangers were beginning to comment about my lameness, since I had a noticeable limp at that time.

My mother knew that something needed to be done about this; so she took me to see a Christian Science practitioner. He began to help me through prayer. He talked to me about Christian Science and some of the healings he'd had. I don't recall offhand exactly what the practitioner said, because I was still pretty young—twelve or thirteen, I guess. But I do know it was while talking to him I became convinced that prayer could heal any trouble. It was in the spring that I visited the practitioner, and soon the pain completely stopped. When I went back to school the following fall, one of my schoolmates commented that I was walking normally.

Well, after that healing, I knew that when prayer is really understood, it can solve any kind of problem. As I grew older, I was able to prove this many times for myself. I began reading and studying the Bible and "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mary Baker Eddy.

Then after I got my engineering degree, I started to do design work. At first, I didn't see any reason to devote special time to prayer in regard to my career. My work was well accepted, and pretty soon I began to get a very high opinion of my own ability to create. I'm sure that if I had continued to think so highly of myself, no doubt this reliance on merely personal capacities would have eventually led to failure. But about this time, while I was talking to a Christian Science practitioner, I was reminded that mere personal ability was certainly not responsible for my success. It was pointed out that intelligence comes to man by reflection from God, who is the divine Mind. I was told to remember that man is the spiritual image and likeness of God and that this was my real selfhood. This talk made me do some prayerful thinking about my entire approach to design work. I saw that I had been believing I possessed personal creativeness instead of realizing that all true ideas originate from the one all-knowing Mind, God.

And, you know, when I began to place my work on this spiritual basis, problems at the office worked out much easier. I remember one morning the chief designer was terribly worried about how we were going to redesign a particular instrument which wasn't working properly. Because of this, a job that was worth about three quarters of a million dollars was being held up. He told me to take the next week to try to work it out.

That morning before coming to work, I'd been praying to know that I expressed alertness, accuracy, comprehension, not through any personal capability, but because man is the spiritual expression of divine Mind. So I laid the assembly drawing for the instrument down in front of me, and immediately an idea came to me for the solution. It only required replacing one part of the instrument and modifying another one. To put it mildly, my supervisor was dumbfounded at the quick solution. I was extremely grateful for this proof that the divine Mind, when understood, is the unfailing source of all right ideas. Of course, I've had lots of other experiences along this line too.

So you see, my boyhood conviction that a spiritual understanding of God meets every need has remained with me and has strengthened through the years.

SPEAKER: I'd say you've certainly had proof that prayer can solve any problem, Mr. Buchanan. Thank you for giving us such a thorough picture of how you were led to rely on God.

Friends, in some ways Mr. Buchanan's thinking about his job was typical; it is so easy to become pleased with one's achievements and to fail to recognize that God is the source of all intelligence and creative ability. It is so much wiser to change our outlook from dependence on mere personal ability to prayerful acknowledgment of God as the unfailing source of intelligence and direction.

This spiritual basis of thought— one which requires an understanding of God and the man of His creating—is the foundation for prayer in Christian Science. This is the understanding Christ Jesus used when he did all his marvelous works. In everything the Master did, he illustrated that man is the reflection of infinite Spirit, divine Mind. Jesus was conscious of the fact that whatever the challenge, his ability to solve the problem successfully came from God, as indicated by his statements: "I can of mine own self do nothing," and also, "The Father that dwelleth in me, he doeth the works." To gain the assurance that it is safe to look to the divine Mind as the source of all true ability as Jesus did requires an understanding of two facts: first, that God supreme intelligence is ever available and always present; second, that man as the spiritual image and likeness of God is always capable of receiving the intelligence divine Love imparts.

If we are tempted to feel that we can run out of ideas, we can know that God is the unlimited, inexhaustible, perpetual source of intelligence and is constantly imparting everything that is needed to the man of His creating. If we're afraid we don't have the ability to think of something fresh and original, let us realize that man's true capabilities are God-given, since man is spiritual, the reflection of divine Truth. Life, and Love.

Understanding these truths of spiritual being inspires original thought and action. And just think of the confidence and assurance such an understanding brings! Mrs. Eddy puts it this way in her book "Miscellaneous Writings" (p. 307): "God gives you His spiritual ideas, and in turn, they give you daily supplies. Never ask for tomorrow: it is enough that divine Love is an ever-present help; and if you wait, never doubting, you will have all you need every moment."

The musical selection on the program was Hymn No. 275 from the Christian Science Hymnal (Praise now creative Mind).