your decisions February 7, 2000 Issue

How do you make big decisions? Do you discuss all the options with family and friends? Make long lists of pros and cons? Research all the ramifications?

While these may be useful steps, they may not bring the clarity necessary to make a confident decision. What's needed is spiritual light.

We hope you'll find that the prayers, spiritual study, and healing experiences authors share in this column help bring the right choices and truly satisfying decisions to light in your life.

"Your decisions will master you, whichever direction they take." MARY BAKER EDDY

Don't quit. Keep praying!

By Robert J. Rockabrand

Recently a friend sent me a sweet story that got me thinking about prayer and perseverance. One night a mother took her son to a recital by the great Polish pianist Paderewski. Before the concert began, the boy decided to explore the hall, and eventually found himself on stage. When the curtain opened, there he was at the keyboard playing "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star." Undaunted, Paderewski strode to the keyboard and whispered, "Don't quit, keep playing." Quickly he put his arms around the boy's shoulders to play a bass line and countermelody, and for a moment, the world-renowned master and innocent youngster captivated their audience.

True or not, the story presented for me a clear metaphor: the eternal Father-Mother embracing His innocent child and strengthening him to keep going, keep growing. "Don't quit, keep playing" easily becomes "Don't quit. Keep praying!"

"Are we benefited by praying?" Mary Baker Eddy asks in the Christian Science textbook, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures. "Yes," she answers, "the desire which goes forth hungering after righteousness is blessed of our Father, and it does not return unto us void" (p. 2). What happens when we pray? Certainly we often expect to gain something, but we also need to surrender something. When we enter that special "closet" of prayer of which Christ Jesus speaks (see Matt. 6:6), we agree to put aside self-interest, to surrender in meekness and humility our human will to God's divine will, to seek Love's guidance actively, consistently. Mrs. Eddy assures readers of God's help in this effort. She writes: "When a hungry heart petitions the divine Father-Mother God for bread, it is not given a stone, — but more grace, obedience, and love. If this heart, humble and trustful, faithfully asks divine Love to feed it with the bread of heaven, health, holiness, it will be conformed to a fitness to receive the answer to its desire . . ." (Miscellaneous Writings, p. 127).

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