The right ideas when you need them
Originally appeared online in the teen series: Your Healings - January 9, 2018
“Music to my ears.” It was a few weeks into the school year when this phrase suddenly popped into my head. And while I didn’t know why, this cliché felt very profound to me. I immediately made a note of it on my phone, then quickly forgot about it.
Around the same time, I was taking a graphic novel class (composing a novel in comic strip form), and we’d begun writing a story that would become our own graphic novel. A few weeks later, the rough draft of my story had come together. All I needed was a title.
One day, as I was looking through the notes in my phone, I came upon the note I had written a few weeks before: “music to my ears.” That was when it occurred to me that this could be the title for my graphic novel.
Since all ideas are included in Mind, this specific inspiration wasn’t a coincidence.
At first, I was skeptical. I’d recorded the idea weeks before, when I hadn’t even been thinking about my project. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized how perfectly the title worked for my novel. Even when I tried to come up with another title, nothing came to mind. No other title was possible. This was it. But how could I have known the title when I didn’t yet know how my project was going to turn out?
In the Christian Science Sunday School, I’d learned that another name for God is Mind, and that as God’s children we are the expression of the one Mind. So where could this inspiration have come from? The answer, of course, is the one Mind. As Mary Baker Eddy explains in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, this Mind is “all-hearing and all-knowing,” the Mind “to whom each need of man is always known and by whom it will be supplied” (p. 7). I could see how since all ideas are included in Mind, then it wasn’t a coincidence that those four words came to thought at the time they did.
LISA ANDREWS—STAFF
In fact, as I think about it, I’ve experienced God’s supply many times through the arrival of a useful and perfect idea right when I needed it. I’ve been walking to class, in the shower, about to fall asleep, and a perfect idea will come to me answering a need in an assignment or project. I know that receptivity for these ideas could only originate in divine Mind, because they’ve never come as the result of my own mental straining or efforts. These ideas come as a clear flash of light—an inspiration rather than an exertion. And because we each reflect this Mind, it’s natural for each of us to know whatever we need to know. Understanding this truth, that such “lightbulb” moments are never of our own creating, helps to relieve stress and free us from a sense of personal responsibility surrounding whatever assignments or projects we need to complete.
Sometimes it can feel like we have to search for the right idea or word, or that we’re straining to hear God’s voice or working to receive His help. But when we realize that we already live in “the unsearchable realm of Mind” (Science and Health, p. 264), then our job is really more about opening our eyes to inspiration that is already in Mind. However, I have found that it’s helpful to be disciplined in acknowledging that there is only one Mind. A clear sense that we don’t have a personal mind of our own, coupled with a calm trust in Mind’s allness, helps lift us out of the dark moments when the way seems unclear, and brings the necessary ideas to light.
Discovering that God truly is supplying everything I need, even the little things, and that He will answer even before I ask, is truly “music to my ears.” I have found so much joy in tuning in to His eternal song a little more each day.
