Article January 9, 1989 Issue

Answers when we need them

When we need answers, the Bible is always at hand, showing us the presence and practicality of God's help and comfort.

Lucia Johnson Leith

The frightened squirrel trapped in the drainpipe scratched frantically trying to get out. Short of somehow dismantling the downspout feeding into the pipe, I saw no way of helping. That morning, though, in studying the Bible, I had read about the Apostle Peter's divine liberation from prison. See Acts 12:1–11 . Now, I thought with confidence, if turning wholeheartedly to God could free Peter, surely it could free this squirrel. I prayed to understand that because God is Love and imparts love, I could know how to help. The idea came to shift the downspout. I was able to move it just enough for the squirrel to slip out.

A small event, but it lightened my step that day and made me grateful, yet again, for the Holy Bible. Once more its healing message had come to my aid when I needed it, quieting anxiety with the remembrance of God's power and love, so that I could be receptive to the necessary practical solution. To me, this represented not a soothing of the human mind but an awakening to the present possibilities for good, in small as well as large things.

The Bible's praises and prayers to God, its reports of how ordinary men and women, just like us, solved their problems by learning about and relying on God, the many accounts of the healings by our Way-shower, Christ Jesus—all enable us to understand God better, to awake to His presence. And in better understanding God, we find answers we need when we need them because God is the ever-present source of all wisdom. As a New Testament writer discerned, God is "the only wise God." I Tim. 1:17. And since God is Spirit, as the Bible teaches, divine wisdom is wholly spiritual, unlimited by human preconceptions or opinions.

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