The long-delayed news I’d been waiting for had finally arrived. I learned that I didn’t get the job I’d applied for. 

I was overjoyed.

On the surface that made no sense. These were uncertain times for me. I had nothing in my bank account and no home of my own, and I badly needed to be working and earning. 

Beneath the surface, though, something else had been going on. I was finding a new way to think about certainty. I wasn’t enthused about the role I’d applied for, and so I’d been praying to know whether I’d made the right decision by even seeking that employment. That prayer was answered in a sweet sense of reassurance that came to me one evening in very specific words—that the certainty is in God. To me, this meant I didn’t need to be humanly certain of what was right. I just needed to know that God was certain, and that I could trust that divine certainty.

That doesn’t mean God knows and organizes the details of our lives, but that the right solution comes to light as we become conscious of God’s love, to which we each have an enduring relation as expressions of the Love that is our creator. As divine Love’s spiritual offspring, expressing all that God is, we have no gaps in our experience of goodness, and time and again I’d found that perceiving this spiritual fact, and accepting it, brought needed solutions to human difficulties.  

That’s what happened in this case. My joy at the rejection letter sprang from a sure sense that this wasn’t human failure but God’s certainty heralding a better opportunity ahead, which is what soon transpired. I was sought after, hired, and then trained in a role I hadn’t applied for—one that used and developed skills I’ve loved employing ever since. 

I’ve thought about this glimpse of a higher sense of certainty as the official date approaches for the United Kingdom to leave the European Union, after decades of membership. With the trade wars and continuing Middle East strife also in the mix of headlines over the past year, it seems as if one of the most common words in today’s media lexicon is “uncertainty.” Certainty, let alone the certainty of goodness, can feel like a distant dream.

But there’s a legitimacy to confidence in God’s goodness, which is illustrated in an inspiring story of spiritual poise in the face of disruptive change. It’s a Bible account of Gamaliel, a highly respected doctor of the Mosaic law. When members of the Jewish tribunal in which he was a leading authority were bent on killing the early pioneers of Jesus’ teachings, a few words from Gamaliel calmed the sectarian fury. He said of the apostles: “Let them alone. If this program or this work is merely human, it will fall apart, but if it is of God, there is nothing you can do about it—and you better not be found fighting against God!” (Acts 5:38, 39, Eugene Peterson, The Message).

Gamaliel’s profound faith in God’s influence on events stilled the self-righteous certainty of the human mind by pointing out what we can be certain of—that the divine Mind, God, inevitably prevails. 

This spiritual sense of certainty is seen in Christian Science, which was discovered by Mary Baker Eddy almost two millennia later. It reveals that God is good, that this spiritual goodness isn’t subject to circumstances, and that Jesus’ record of healing evidenced how an inspired, spiritual discernment of divine goodness brings practical change for the better. As we yield to this spiritual understanding, our material sense of uncertainty gives place to the Christ—the spiritual idea of God’s ceaseless goodness, which impelled Jesus’ words and deeds—in tangible ways. Health displaces sickness; we’re freed from some sin; calm dispels crisis. 

The onlyness and allness of God, Spirit, is the central certainty of all of our lives.

As our certainty in God’s goodness grows through such experiences, we lose confidence in flawed human forms of trust: a material rather than spiritual sense of self-reliance, blind faith in religious creeds, or unquestioning confidence in political philosophies. The book of Isaiah (see 46:5–10) articulates how Deity’s promises have consistently come true, while faith in material idols has proved vain, explaining why, in the words of the creator: “For I am God, and there is none else; I am God, and there is none like me.”

This points to the onlyness and allness of God, Spirit, as the central certainty of all of our lives. Consequently, our true nature exists forever beyond the ebb and flow of material thinking and action, in which fragility is believed to be inevitable, resulting in sickness and sorrow, vulnerability and lack. As God’s creation, we’re actually spiritual and environed solely in God’s spiritual reality. Our misperceptions of life and mind as matter-based give way to the Science of life’s divine reality, and it results “in the proof of healing,—in a sweet and certain sense that God is Love,” as Mary Baker Eddy puts it in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures (p. 569). What a profoundly needed sense of certainty!

The 2016 UK referendum on Brexit was described as “a once in a generation decision,” with a global as well as a local impact. As a message from Mrs. Eddy to her Church in 1902 says, “Earth’s actors change earth’s scenes; …” Yet this message also describes a deeper change that the world constantly needs. It says: “… the curtain of human life should be lifted on reality, on that which outweighs time; on duty done and life perfected, wherein joy is real and fadeless” (Message to The Mother Church for 1902, p. 17).

We’re all “earth’s actors,” able to play our part in changing earth’s scenes for the better by lifting that curtain on divine reality already present, already in operation. The certainty we seek is at all times in Spirit, and by accepting and evidencing the continuity of good found in God’s infinite and eternal control, we bring to light the divine security that belongs to all humanity.

Tony Lobl
Associate Editor