I Feel as though everything is out of control!" That comment, with variations, is heard a lot these days. The "variations" might include fears about children, uncontrolled finances, home, business.

Perhaps our basic need, when life feels out of control and we seem helpless to do anything about it, is to think more deeply about the source of real control—God, divine Mind. Mrs. Eddy writes in the Christian Science textbook, Science and Health, "The real jurisdiction of the world is in Mind, controlling every effect and recognizing all causation as vested in divine Mind." This certainly is consistent with Christ Jesus' life and ministry. He never doubted that God was able to govern a situation. He never wondered if he had been given too much to do. In John we read that Jesus said, "The Son can do nothing of himself, but what he seeth the Father do: for what things soever he doeth, these also doeth the Son likewise." Both Jesus and Mrs. Eddy were plainly indicating that the control of man and the universe originates with God.

If we're willing to accept the fact, then, that God controls all that truly is, how can we see more of this power and authority in our daily affairs? How can we progressively eliminate aggressive suggestions that we lack control of our own experience? Our solution is to entertain God's thoughts rather than yield to the many suggestions of the carnal mind—of hurry, pressure, lack of control, and loss of dominion.

Throughout the Bible there are numerous accounts of individuals who were in situations that seemed out of control and who then turned to God in their extremity and entertained His healing thoughts—His "angels." The prophet Elijah once gave in to total discouragement because he was the only prophet of God left in Israel and the cruel Jezebel had ordered his death. Feeling separated from God's loving control, Elijah sat under a juniper tree and wished for death. The Bible records, "And as he lay and slept under a juniper tree, behold, then an angel touched him, and said unto him, Arise and eat." This angel, this God-given thought, was exactly what Elijah needed because it brought assurance of God's guidance and protecting care. He ate and soon resumed his journey, having been liberated from the crushing suggestion that evil was in control of his destiny.

Centuries later, the Apostle Peter was thrown into prison and he faced possible execution in addition to physical bonds. As both he and the church continued praying to God, an angel appeared to Peter and led him out of the prison to freedom.

These and other instances reveal to us that we, too, have access to angels, to God's thoughts, which, when listened to and accepted, free us from whatever would oppose the government of God.

Inherent in the concept of angels is the necessity for us to listen. We have freedom of choice, always, as to whether we listen to the dreary predictions of the world or whether we listen to God and entertain His thoughts. Angels are ever present because God is ever present, revealing Truth to our receptive thinking. If we are mesmerized by the insistent clamor of the physical senses, we cannot hear what God is saying to us. Our need is to prayerfully accept what God is knowing about us, here and now. God eternally and constantly imparts to His offspring, man, the wholeness of God's own nature.

Hosts of angels are available to deliver us in every situation. God's impartations reveal a law of harmony, silencing mortal mind's restless, uncontrolled sense of things. They guide us step by step to untangle whatever confronts us.

In Science and Health Mrs. Eddy speaks of angels as "God's thoughts passing to man; spiritual intuitions, pure and perfect; the inspiration of goodness, purity, and immortality, counteracting all evil, sensuality, and mortality." Insisting, prayerfully, that one has the spiritual intuition, that one has the God-given inspiration needed to counteract fears of being subject to forces beyond one's control, does much to bring one's thinking and experience under the actual control of God, good. No matter what the current pressures seem to be, one's needed control is always available in quietly listening to God's angels, His perfect thoughts, which displace fear.

The first chapter of Genesis records that God gave man dominion, a marvelous, all-inclusive quality which the real man, God's image and likeness, eternally possesses. The man of God's creating cannot be mesmerized by suggestions that he can lose his dominion or that he ever has lost it. Understanding these spiritual facts frees thought from the burden of human will, from the suggestion that needed control must be generated by a mortal. God's control is imparted to man as spiritual ideas, His angels, which pass to the receptive thought in every age and under all circumstances.