For every act of daily living there is just the right place
The Christian Science Monitor
For every act of daily living there is just the right place. In these days when towns and cities seem so crowded one needs more than ever to prove this by knowing it. Many a person who makes this statement, however, thinks of some place on earth that he can see with his human eyes, instead of understanding that man really lives in Mind, not in any material body, house, or world. In this Mind which is God, without limits of any sort, there is plenty of room to think and act rightly. To dwell wholly there is the only way of true freedom and happiness. Mind is the one right place in which man forever belongs. Here alone can he carry on all of his actual, spiritual work. From Mind his real experience can never be separated.
When Isaac pitched his tent in the valley of Gerar to dwell there and started to dig wells of water, at once the herdmen of Gerar strove with his herdmen, saying, "The water is ours." In other words the people of this land thought, as in many a case to-day, that there was no room in that valley for strangers. It was only when Isaac did his work fully and found enough wells of springing water for all that he could say, "For now the Lord hath made room for us, and we shall be fruitful in the land." With patient joy he had set to work to know his right place and to be blessed of God for being there. Thus he proved that good is boundless and not limited to any one special spot.
Unless one sees the divine idea which this story sets forth, one may think of Isaac's well digging as showing merely how strife may be settled peaceably by the moving on to an unclaimed location. Isaac, however, was constantly depending on God for guidance. He knew indeed that his whole place of living was in infinite Principle, and as he knew this he found it manifest in just the way that those with him could understand. Instead of outlining humanly just what plot of ground was theirs, he was ever ready to be active as wisdom revealed what was best to him. The "Fear not, for I am with thee" of God made him sure of where in all his true being he dwelt and was bound to prosper unconfined by any material sense of things. For this I am of which he was ever conscious was certainly infinite Mind, not matter. By reasoning in accord with divine intelligence, Isaac was simply abiding in and with God in his daily thinking. Thus he was positive that the one spiritual consciousness was always broad enough for his prayerful living.
How foolish is the belief that there is not room enough for man's action of every kind! Shelter, clothing, food, and work, the so-called necessities of life, one and all are mental concepts. To have and enjoy the fullness of the right concept one must know what God knows. Instead of supposing friction or difficulty or surplus or lack, God conceives only of the spiritual idea in changeless harmony. This idea has its sole dwelling place and working place in Spirit. Here it is fed, clothed, sheltered, and kept alert by divine Love. As the practice or practical operation of Spirit, it has all the room there is in which to unfold. Infinite consciousness is indeed infinite and is the only satisfactory place for living and working.
In the divine Mind there is, of course, no room for trouble. As Mrs. Eddy says on page 339 of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures": "Since God is All, there is no room for His unlikeness. God, Spirit, alone created all, and called it good. Therefore evil, being contrary to good, is unreal, and cannot be the product of God." In fact there is no room in Spirit for any such hampering belief as an overcrowding of industry or of housing conditions. The real man in the likeness of God is housed and employed by divine intelligence. As the thought of the world at large on this subject expands it must inevitably be found that there is plenty for all doing and living. Busy construction is bound to take the place of any sense of destruction, since Mind's infinity ceaselessly unfolds. Really it never could be interfered with. Thus in the true consciousness there is room only for stable joy and never for any fear of limitation.
The belief of lack of room often claims to present itself in connection with well-being of any sort, just as in the problems of housing and industry. Mrs. Eddy saw this clearly when in her poem, "Christ and Christmas," she wrote:—
Forever present, bounteous, free, Christ comes in gloom;
And aye, with grace towards you and me, For health makes room.
Since true health is simply spiritual wholeness of action, it is indeed important to know that for it God constantly provides infinity of place. In the divine Mind there is plenty of room for every true function of man. Of course the true function is the activity or idea of Spirit, entirely apart from any human sense of things. This spiritual idea is going on freely here and now in the infinitude of Mind.
Thus the student of Christian Science who knows that in Mind there is room for all right activity is thinking of spiritual cause and spiritual effect, rather than of any mortal counterfeits. The manifestation for which there is room is just as infinite as its cause is infinite. Perfect idea, which is the reality, is located already with absolute satisfaction in perfect Mind. Just to know this is good. The very knowing of it, however, brings about invariably an adjustment of the human sense of place and room more to the divine standard, through the disappearance of the beliefs of limitation and crowding. There could not possibly be anything larger than the infinity of Mind. Idea could never exceed the capacity of Principle, in which it dwells. Clearly then the way for daily practice is to know that divine intelligence is ever producing exactly the right amount of activity for its infinite capacity—and this right amount is thus necessarily infinite.
