Editorial October 24, 2016 Issue

Elections and divine power

Barbara Vining

However United States citizens feel about the long, drawn-out, and contentious presidential election season that is coming to a conclusion on voting day, November 8, it’s essential to remember that voting is a privilege not yet accorded to every citizen of the world. And it is a significant responsibility.

What’s been becoming clear to me lately, though, is that how much one single vote actually counts—beyond being one vote among those that make up the total in one direction or another—depends upon the power behind that vote. I’m not talking about human power or influence, of course, but about divine power. What if, for example, instead of getting all riled up over the campaign, we let our thinking and decision-making be guided by this truth: “Power belongs to God” (Psalms 62:11, New King James Version). That would be a very unselfish approach. And something I recently read made me realize how powerful that approach would be.

One day, while Adam Dickey was serving as secretary to the discoverer of Christian Science, Mary Baker Eddy, she said to him: “Prayer must have no selfishness in it. Hanging pictures and arranging furniture for another’s pleasure is unselfishness, and to the degree that it is unselfish, it is like God.” And then she quoted from page 192 of her book Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, “Whatever holds human thought in line with unselfed love, receives directly the divine power” (We Knew Mary Baker Eddy, Expanded Edition, Vol. II, p. 447).