Article November 2, 1987 Issue

Resilience

When it seems as if a crisis would hold us down, spiritual buoyancy helps us meet the challenge and move forward.

Jeanne Steely Laitner

Resilience is a most desirable quality in human experience when we see it as an attitude of elasticity and buoyancy Resilience helps an individual to recover from crises, to function more effectively amid the rapid pace and change in today's society, and to continue to make progress. What does Christian Science teach us about how to gain a deeper, spiritual basis for this valuable quality?

Christian Science teaches that an understanding of God and of man's relationship to Him enables us to look beyond a challenge and ask ourselves what God, divine Mind, knows as actually taking place in divine reality. God is perfect Principle, the only creative, conceiving Mind. God creates and knows only what is good, harmonious, and eternal. There can be no chaos or crisis in the kingdom governed by perfect Mind. And, in reality, this divine harmony includes the man of God's creating.

As our understanding of these spiritual facts deepens, we learn to see a crisis not as an unsolvable dilemma but as an opportunity to prove God's present perfection and His eternal, loving care for His offspring. Instead of yielding our thinking to fear or discouragement or self-pity at times of challenge, we can turn to God in prayer, humbly endeavoring to understand what He knows of His man and creation. Instead of accepting a mortal sense of despair, we can confidently expect healing solutions, turning points, progress.

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