Article December 6, 2010 Issue

DIVINE JUSTICE AT WORK

BY HELEN SMART

CORPORATE REDUNDANCY can be a bewildering experience for the employee. Those facing layoffs because a company is restructuring can be left wondering what to do next or ruminating on the injustice of their situation. Practical answers often seem elusive, while fear of an uncertain future and financial insecurity loom large on the mental horizon.

But there is a way to respond which goes beyond mere optimism or positive thinking. We can pray to be guided out of an unjust situation and to regain our equilibrium and security, and we can be led to take appropriate steps, submitting to the influence and guidance of the Christ. Simply put, Christian Science reveals a way to pray that leads us to find the right thing to do. This kind of prayer is the prayer of affirmation. In Science and Health, Mary Baker Eddy assures us that "prayer cannot change the Science of being, but it tends to bring us into harmony with it." The passage continues, "His work is done, and we have only to avail ourselves of God's rule in order to receive His blessing, which enables us to work out our own salvation" (pp. 2, 3).

So just how can this Science of being help sort out a tangled situation, or assure a just outcome when wrongs have been done to us?