The certainty of having what we need

We can be certain of having what we need. This isn't a lightly made promise.

"Fear not, little flock," Christ Jesus said to his disciples (and the Christ is always saying to each of us); "for it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom." ^{Luke 12:32 ;}

Facing and mastering fear is an element of opening the door to what we need. Greed, and fretful ambitions for "more," arise in fears—fears for tomorrow or even for this hour. Fear that if we don't have a mountain, or even a hillock, of material things, then maybe we'll feel unhappy and incomplete.

A perpetual state—or just a passing phase—of not having enough of what we really need is, at root, an expression of fear-filled mortal belief in the finiteness of good. It is a mortally mental condition rather than simply a financial one. But we can take heart from that fact. We can overcome such mental conditions through spiritual understanding and growth.

Christian Science doesn't deal in hollow abstractions. The truths of God's goodness and man's coexistence with God improve the texture of our lives as they cast light on our thought. There isn't one pure Christian truth that is not applicable to the human condition and that is not standing ready to help and support us, and to melt our anxieties. And as this happens, we will meet our bills more readily, or whatever—we'll be more amply supplied in some way with our human necessities.

Fear involves the belief that man is carnal. Mastering that fear is a key to the kingdom, or consciousness of all good, which Jesus referred to. What's needed is spiritual perception along with the willingness to follow where that perception takes us; and it will take us along the road of diminishing envy and greed, less materialism and more consistent spirituality, less selfishness and steadier love. Demonstrating the substance of Spirit through Christian Science goes further than just gaining something. It involves losing something: the vulnerable, material sense of being.

To say we must deflate our fears of inflation is not to play with phrases. Like all destructive conditions, inflation will never be coped with if we're motivated merely by fear of it. In the reality of being, all is Spirit and spiritual. Understanding this, we have a unique weapon to wield against economic ailments. The Psalmist was sure of God's bountiful provision for us: "Many, O Lord my God, are thy wonderful works which thou hast done, and thy thoughts which are to us-ward: they cannot be reckoned up in order unto thee: if I would declare and speak of them, they are more than can be numbered." ^{Ps. 40:5 ;}

To de-fang the serpent of fear we need to wake up from mesmerism. Chronic lack can be the outcome of mesmerically fastening thought on matter rather than on the substance of Spirit. "Sleep and mesmerism explain the mythical nature of material sense," our Leader, Mary Baker Eddy, tells us. Further along she adds the illustration, "Under the mesmeric illusion of belief, a man will think that he is freezing when he is warm, and that he is swimming when he is on dry land." ^{Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, pp. 490— 491 ;} Under the mesmerism of illusion, an individual may think he's a deprived, fearful mortal instead of God's idea, much-loved man. It is our consciousness of the law and presence of Mind which shatters the illusion of mesmerism—that, coupled with a life oriented to spiritual values and shedding sensuality.

"Cutting the coat to fit the cloth" may seem at times a wise human necessity. It may also point to a need for us to be more spiritually-minded. Mortal thought sees a material world of insufficiency. It leaves us on the level of drawing finite things (material objects or services) from a finite reservoir. The Christ, by contrast, shows that innumerable spiritual ideas—ideas that "cannot be reckoned up"—are the real creation. They have an endless source, God. Despite the human usefulness of money as a medium of exchange, dollar or lira bills, or silver coins, can't measure how much of God's goodness we can have. Dollar bills, we might say, speak only to mortals. God, though, tells us through the Christ of His unchanging love and substance. Our demonstration of the substance of Love, Truth, in spiritually satisfied (not self-satisfied!) living makes more visible the goodness of God to those around us.

Rightly based living will help us have a right income. But picturing oneself as financially well-off—"think rich, get rich"— is never the way to what we need. What we do need is the growing consciousness that man and the universe are spiritual, the immortal evidence of Spirit's presence and substance. This consciousness drives out the false beliefs that make us feel apprehensive, self-concerned, and frustrated. It wakes us up from the Adamic illusion of living in a material "garden," in an existence that is both beautiful and ugly, and very definitely finite. It lifts us out of the delusion of living a life confined to physicality, where all the good things come "out of the ground," or from matter. We stop looking for what we need in the wrong place and in the wrong way. What we genuinely need, be it shelter, food, or transport, actually derives from Spirit, unchanging Love.

Overcoming fear is as essential to our demonstration of substance as to that of true health. Mrs. Eddy writes, "Let neither fear nor doubt overshadow your clear sense and calm trust, that the recognition of life harmonious—as Life eternally is—can destroy any painful sense of, or belief in, that which Life is not." ^{ibid., p. 495 .} Unremitting lack is a painful sense. We can shed that false, fearful sense and the meager living it can induce. We can hold in check and progressively negate the mesmerism of mortality and find access to the love and substance of Spirit. Then the river of our living purifies, and frees up like frozen waters in spring.