A glorious sight is a rainbow against dark, receding storm clouds that have passed overhead, leaving fields, animals, and people refreshed on hot midsummer days. First the storm, and then the bow, spanning the sky, a vast, richly colored are. What a sense of grandeur! I love rainbows for their beauty, and because they remind me of the Biblical story of Noah—and of his victory over adversity.

Most of us don't have to go through an experience as severe as Noah's, but nevertheless we yearn for security. This is true of a friend of mine. At a cost of much time and money, he is building a new house. Like his first one, put up after he returned from being a World War II prisoner of war, this home includes a fallout shelter. He is sure that either in his time or his children's, there will be an atomic holocaust, and he wants to be ready. Other people, fearing financial, emotional, physical, or other dangers, hedge themselves about in other ways. But do they always find the safety they so earnestly seek?

We learn in Christian Science that true safety is not to be found in reliance on matter, or in material superstructures or materially based considerations. Even the ark Noah built was not in itself a means of safety. Surely Noah must have understood to some extent that God is all-powerful and good, and that he could expect to see good manifested in his experiences.

Christian Science shows us that we also should expect to see good. Mrs. Eddy, a devoted modern-day disciple of Christ Jesus, writes: "The Scriptures give the keynote of Christian Science from Genesis to Revelation, and this is the prolonged tone: 'For the Lord He is God, and there is none beside Him.' And because He is All-in-all, He is in nothing unlike Himself; and nothing that worketh or maketh a lie is in Him, or can be divine consciousness." ^{Miscellaneous Writings, p. 366.}

Mrs. Eddy's definition of "ark" in the Christian Science textbook, Science and Health, points to where true security lies: "Safety; the idea, or reflection, of Truth, proved to be as immortal as its Principle; the understanding of Spirit, destroying belief in matter.

"God and man coexistent and eternal; Science showing that the spiritual realities of all things are created by Him and exist forever. The ark indicates temptation overcome and followed by exaltation." ^{Science and Health, p. 581.}

Christian Science shows with mathematical certainty that we experience good in proportion as we prayerfully understand and hold to the facts of God and of our true, spiritual selfhood as His creation, man.

In examining the tenor of one's daily thoughts, one might be surprised, as I was, to discover the inordinate proportion of time and attention one often gives to consideration of the ephemeral, the mortal, or the material, instead of the real, the eternal, and the spiritual. The shock of this realization might be just what is needed to make one begin to weigh one's thinking differently, until at last the beliefs of material sense, with their seeming ability to produce sickness, sin, or danger, fade away.

One of Mrs. Eddy's pupils wrote of a response Mrs. Eddy gave to a question about why results from prayer were sometimes uneven: "Mrs. Eddy had a pencil in her hand; she balanced it on one finger, and then, tipping it to one side, she said, as I recall, It is because we have too much weight on the side of matter; then, tipping the pencil in the opposite direction, she added that some day we shall have more weight on the side of Spirit; then we shall always heal the sick." ^{We Knew Mary Baker Eddy (Boston: The Christian Science Publishing Society, 1979), p. 143 .}

It is interesting to look up words like weight, balance, scale, ratio, and proportion in Mrs. Eddy's writings. It is reassuring to know that through prayer one can work step by step at increasing the weight he gives to Spirit, God!

The manifestation of good moral qualities such as humility, unselfishness, integrity—qualities derived from God—is an important part of giving up materially based thinking and proving one's native spirituality.

Noah expressed many moral qualities. The Bible states that he "was a just man and perfect in his generations," that he "walked with God," and that "according to all that God commanded him, so did he." ^{Gen. 6:9,22.}

What impresses me most about Noah is his absolute commitment. He had been faithful in carrying out God's direction in building the ark. But he went further and obeyed all God's commands. We read in the Bible, "And the Lord said unto Noah, Come thou and all thy house into the ark." ^{Gen. 7:1.} And he went. He cast his weight on the side of total obedience, insofar as he understood it, to God's directives. His understanding of the fundamental, spiritual facts of being may have been great or small, but the vital, protecting factor was that he was fully committed to what he did know of God.

The Bible recounts many other stories of people who found safety through using the understanding they had—Elijah, Jonah, David, Esther, Ruth, and Paul, to name just a few. And the career of our great Master, Christ Jesus, was the acme of demonstration. He was firm in his understanding of his sonship with God. This enabled him to prove not only for himself but for others the Father's all-encompassing care. Jesus calmed the wind and waves, he escaped unharmed from an angry mob, he fed hungry multitudes, he healed the sick and the sinner and raised the dead, and he crowned these deeds with the glories of resurrection and ascension. His lifework was so well done that it embraces all mankind, both now and forever. Today Christian Scientists are demonstrating that the Christ, Truth, expressed by the Master is here to heal and save.

Some years ago when I was on my way to a stage scenery class that was part of the course requirements for a university degree, I was mulling over an experience my sister had had some time before. Her family was driving along on a winding mountain road late at night, and she was asleep with her child on her lap. Suddenly, for no explainable reason, she and the child woke up and felt impelled to change their position. No sooner had they done so than a truck came along and slashed into the car, destroying the section where she and the child had been.

I was grateful for their protection, but just as I was going to my class, I felt impelled to turn my thought completely away from the false belief that there ever had been an accident or a narrow escape, and to know firmly that man can never be anything but safe in God's care.

During the class one of the scene painters asked me to go over and pull a rope to lower some scenery. Misunderstanding her, I yanked at the wrong rope, and a whole series of heavy metal counterweights came crashing down. When this started, the thought came to me very clearly to stand still and be calm. This I did. Though one weight came close enough to land in a bucket of paint that splattered my leg, none hit me or anyone else.

No matter where we are or what we do, it is important that we progress in our understanding of God and man's relationship to Him, and that we put the weight of our thinking more and more on the side of Spirit. Increasingly we will find that we are safe in the "ark." Mrs. Eddy urges: "Hold thy gaze to the light, and the iris of faith, more beautiful than the rainbow seen from my window at the close of a balmy autumnal day, will span thy heavens of thought." ^{Mis., p. 355.}