‘Our Father’ and the global economy

A few months ago viewers around the world watched their TVs with concern as the United States Congress tried to find a way to avoid a budget crisis. We live in a global society these days, and people abroad knew that decisions taken by the US would have an impact on their economies, just as the continuing challenges in eurozone nations affect other parts of the globe. These conditions warrant our prayers. 

A good friend recently reminded me that God knows nothing of recession, economic collapse, or financial crisis because His abundant resources supply spiritual ideas that meet all our needs. And He can do this for everyone because, as the Lord’s Prayer reminds us, He’s “our Father”! 

When we see ourselves and others as God’s children, we are accepting the unity of humanity under one Father. Just as living in a global economy means that economic and business decisions half a world away can affect people in your community, effective prayer to see God as our Father can touch and bless us all. 

Accepting that God is “our Father,” Jesus fed the thousands of people who had listened to his teachings. As Mark’s Gospel explains: “When he had taken the five loaves and the two fishes, he looked up to heaven, and blessed, and brake the loaves, and gave them to his disciples to set before them; and the two fishes divided he among them all. . . . And they that did eat of the loaves were about five thousand men” (6:41, 44).

This unfailing trust in our Father enabled Christ Jesus to share a few fish and a handful of loaves with a huge crowd of people. That there were baskets of food left over shows that God doesn’t supply us with “just enough,” but abundantly. What Jesus proved that day was spiritual economics: The spiritual needs or demands of the crowd were met by the perfect understanding that God, Father, is Spirit, and His children are spiritual. That included the whole crowd in the blessing. 

Christian Science helps explain this revelation. “In the scientific relation of God to man, we find that whatever blesses one blesses all, as Jesus showed with the loaves and the fishes,—
Spirit, not matter, being the source of supply,” writes Mary Baker Eddy in Science and Health (p. 206). 

Trusting God’s care means moving away from a material way of thinking and toward a more spiritual outlook. 

Throughout the Bible we can find examples of trust in God. During a prolonged drought, the prophet Elijah saw God’s abundant, never failing supply for a widow and her son in Zarephath. All the woman had was some meal in a barrel and oil in a cruse, but Elijah told her, “The barrel of meal shall not waste, neither shall the cruse of oil fail” (I Kings 17:14). After agreeing to share her supplies and feed Elijah, the woman chose to trust his prayerful words, and neither the meal nor the oil ran out while the drought lasted. 

Trusting God’s care means moving away from a material way of thinking and toward a more spiritual outlook. This was how Elijah and Christ Jesus were able to share God’s abundance. I’ve seen it in my own experience, too. One Saturday evening last winter, while I was dining with my family, I mentioned that my freelance work had dried up. My mother-in-law reminded me that as schoolchildren were so blessed by my literacy workshops, my services would always be needed. 

After dinner I checked my messages and discovered an inner-city school in Manchester had a major and urgent problem getting their boys to read and needed some inspiration from a children’s author. What was even more satisfying was that my services had been recommended by another school. A couple of days later I had a great day at the school. After the workshop, I learned that at least two children with literacy difficulties now enjoyed reading and writing as never before. 

Our Father’s abundance can help anyone deal with a financial crisis. Even as the interdependent economies of the eurozone struggle to find solutions, our prayers can affirm that God’s goodness is always present and that divine guidance can bring each nation to the answer that is right for its people. “When we realize that there is one Mind, the divine law of loving our neighbor as ourselves is unfolded; . . .” says Science and Health (p. 205). 

In this interconnected twenty-first century there are issues that go beyond a local, regional, or national level to the global scale. The decisions and actions of a businessman in downtown Seattle or Toronto can impact a farmer in the wheat fields of southern France, and a confectioner in Lancashire, England. But prayer to see that we all have the same “Father” can meet any economic need or situation through spiritual understanding—whether you’re in Singapore, São Paulo, Seattle, or Settle, England!