Uninterrupted Unfoldment of ideas
The president of a large corporation was asked why his company's scientists and engineers hadn't discovered some current innovations much sooner. His reply was, "Sometimes we have to wait for God." This man was not a student of Christian Science. However, he had glimpsed a basic teaching of this religion—the limitation of the human mind until it is allied to the divine source of true intelligence, which is God.
Are the impartations of this Mind intermittent? Can they falter, can they cease? Sometimes Christians of all denominations say, "I can't feel any inspiration"; "The right idea hasn't appeared yet"; "I'll have to wait for unfoldment." These statements are only half true.
We do often have to wait. But not for what divine Mind is doing. What we have to wait for is that degree of readiness, meekness, and willingness which puts us in the position of being able to recognize Mind's angel messages. What an important difference is indicated here! Having to wait for these messages implies that unfoldment is sporadic—sometimes on, sometimes off. Can this be the case, when divine Mind—eternal, infinite, unchanging, but ever fresh — is ceaselessly unfolding its perfect nature through its spiritual ideas? Mind's knowing is continuous. Mrs. Eddy tells us in Science and Health, "Mind is perpetual motion." Science and Health, p. 240;
The challenging fact is that inspiration can be as close as our thought and still be ignored or resisted. In these instances, to human sense we do have to wait for spiritual understanding, the right idea, guidance to the correct human footsteps, or the evidence of healing, harmony, or supply—perhaps even for all these. Aggressive suggestions of man's unfitness or unwillingness to receive what Spirit imparts need to be rejected and nullified. Patience, meekness, and, above all, unflagging spiritual activity are required.
The story of Hagar in the Bible tells us that this bondwoman of Abraham and their son had been exiled. Given one bottle of water, they wandered in an arid wilderness, disconsolate. Sarah, Abraham's wife, had insisted on their banishment. The Bible tells us that when there was no more water and Hagar wept, "God opened her eyes, and she saw a well of water; and she went, and filled the bottle with water, and gave the lad drink." Gen. 21:19; Had not the well been there all the time? Of course. But negative thinking— fear, self-pity, phases of the belief in mortality—had literally closed Hagar's eyes to its presence.
Just as garden soil needs careful preparation before it will produce, so thought needs patient cultivation so that it will respond positively to Truth rather than negatively to error. At times when, to mortal sense, struggles with disease, temptation, fear, inadequacy, or lack seem severe, error may trick one into fixing his attention on the erroneous condition to be overcome. Instead of preparing thought for unfoldment by means of unceasing prayer, one may, in effect, simply be prolonging the waiting period.
Then is the time to claim the presence of God's angels and to know persistently that man is receptive to all that God gives—that he is, in fact, an individual expression of universal good.
We have to watch that we are struggling for light, not just against darkness. Mrs. Eddy's use of the word "struggle" is very interesting. She says, for example, that "the habitual struggle to be always good is unceasing prayer." Science and Health, p. 4; When we lift our wrestlings with error to the spiritual level, they will be productive of good, as were Jacob's at Peniel and Christ Jesus' in Gethsemane. Then the human sense of struggle becomes less severe, until it finally yields to peace.
When tempted to believe the suggestion of spiritual stagnation, let's be sure to remind ourselves that the hitch is usually in our own approach; it can never be in Mind's unfoldment, which, because it is Spirit-impelled cannot hesitate or falter even for a moment. Mrs. Eddy writes, "Truth cannot be stereotyped; it unfoldeth forever." No and Yes, p. 45.
All that is really going on is God's unfoldment of Himself. Spiritual man and the spiritual universe are this expression. Each individual identity has its place and its uninterrupted part in this divine action.
Sooner or later, here or hereafter, we will let infinite, spiritual consciousness fully unfold itself to us as the sum and substance of our true being. Human will can never hasten the quiet continuity of good. Nor can human will block this continuity. But the evangelization—the renewing—of our motives, our desires, our aspirations, will shorten the waiting periods until we have gained, step by step, a sense of continuously unfolding good.