Article May 8, 1971 Issue

God's Instant Help

FRANCES B. ZIMMER

Just how near us is God? How long does it take Him to help us? Jeremiah writes: "Am I a God at hand, saith the Lord, and not a God afar off?...Do not I fill heaven and earth? saith the Lord."^{Jer. 23:23, 24;} God's very allness, filling all space, precludes the possibility that anything unlike Him can exist, and a glimpse of this fact reveals that whatever our human need of the moment seems to be, the answer is already available.

In truth the solution is right where the problem appears to be— now. And right when discord is screaming its loudest, the still small voice of Truth and Love is speaking to us, ready to soothe and heal. How could anything be closer than "at hand"? Even light, which requires a calculable lapse of time to reach from "here" to "there," is not nearer. Because "we live, and move, and have our being"^{Acts 17:28;} in Him, we are already surrounded by and at one with God's healing, harmonizing presence. No time lapse!

To comprehend, in some degree, the immediateness of God's goodness, His everywhereness, brings into our experience the practical application of this truth. One who knew something of God's omnipresence and omnipotence suddenly gained a clearer insight into the real meaning of these healing truths through the following experience. Her small son, playing at the beach, fell on a poisonous jellyfish. Although his screams of pain were heartrending, the young mother immediately felt a deep sense of gratitude instead of the fright that might ordinarily appear at such a time. Gratitude at a time like this? Yes! She saw clearly that right at that very moment, on the beach, God was already present. Instead of feeling that help might be coming later from someplace else, she lifted her heart in joy and gratitude because she was confident that God's omnipresence, providing whatever was needed wherever they were, precluded any time lapse.

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