Sentinel Watch September 10, 2012 Issue

'Streams of love' that reverse drought

Carla Stillman—Clarendon Falls, Illinois

I live in the state of Illinois  and have been concerned about the drought and extreme high temperatures that are affecting the American Midwest. In our own yard, trees and plants that have been lovingly tended for years are showing signs of needing much more water. Throughout the region, the lack of rain is devastating farm crops and animal habitats. A recent Reuters article cautioned, “Government forecasters did not rule out that the drought in the US heartland could last past October, continuing what has been the hottest half-year on record” (Karl Plume and Deborah Zabarenko, “Worst drought in 50 years could last through October,” http://bit.ly/PdgM6E).

Many people have been reaching out to God in prayer to meet the food and living needs threatened by the drought. At first, I thought that praying for these things to be resolved definitely meant praying for more rain and lower temperatures. And indeed, rain and more normal temperatures may be the way God, divine Love, meets this great need. But in reading the “inspired account” of creation in the book of Genesis in the Bible, along with the corresponding chapter in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy, I came across a passage that caught my attention and changed my approach. Genesis 2, verses 4 and 5 read: “These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth when they were created, in the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens, and every plant of the field before it was in the earth, and every herb of the field before it grew: for the Lord God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was not a man to till the ground.”

Mrs. Eddy quotes this passage in Science and Health and adds: “Here is the emphatic declaration that God creates all through Mind, not through matter,—that the plant grows, not because of seed or soil, but because growth is the eternal mandate of Mind” (p. 520).

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