Supply is Love made manifest.

I'd heard this since I first began the study of Christian Science. But as a free-lance writer with a family to support, I'd lived a boom-bust cycle financially: riding high, I knew supply was God's love; swinging low, I wondered where God was going to find more. I told myself supply was everywhere, but I often felt desperate about the rent. What I wanted more than anything in the world, it seemed, was a way to demonstrate supply once and for all.

Recently, during a "bust" spell, I found I had trouble getting through the Bible Lesson. ^{In the Christian Science Quarterly;} An experienced Christian Scientist to whom I complained said, "Oh, don't let that happen. The lesson is filled with ideas. Those ideas are your supply for the day." A week later, the lesson included two Bible references I felt were particularly relevant to supply: "I will even make a way in the wilderness, and rivers in the desert" ^{Isa. 43:19;} and "I will pour water upon him that is thirsty, and floods upon the dry ground." ^44:3;

Water in a desert—this caught my attention, and I found myself thinking about a story that had been in the lesson weeks before: Hagar's story. ^{See Gen. 21:9-20;} I remembered how she was turned out with her son, Ishmael, to face the desert alone. All she had was a bottle of water and some bread. How quickly her resources must have been depleted, and how strong her terror and foreboding must have been as she drifted in the wilderness of Beersheba. Water gone, she set her son under a bush and moved away from him so she would not have to see him die. Then, the Bible tells us, God heard the boy's cry, opened Hagar's eyes, and she saw a well.

I had never before asked myself what really happened to Hagar and Ishmael. I had assumed that God saved them, and left it at that. But this time I wondered: Did God plunk down a well, all bricked up and ready to use where no well had been before? Unlikely. But my past experiences with Christian demonstrations of God's law of good told me lots of other things could have happened.

It may have been that while Hagar thought she was wandering aimlessly, spiritual sense actually was leading her right to the well—an oasis, perhaps, where another tribe camped and caravans stopped while crossing the desert. Ishmael is known as the founder of tribes associated with caravans. God provided not just a desperately needed drink of water, but a door to prosperity, food, home, companionship.

Here was a real-life story of a woman with less material basis for hope than I had. And I found myself thinking, "God can open fountains of supply in an apparently desert landscape." And for the first time, I really trusted the thought.

Later the same day, a publisher phoned to offer me contracts and eventually royalties on books I had written years before, but which now were out of print and earning nothing—barren as Hagar's wilderness. My deeper faith in God's care made itself manifest very concretely in these human terms. I rejoiced but soon realized that all I had in hand was a promise of good—hope, not a once-and-for-all solution to insecurity.

And I was right, for the very next day a letter came suggesting that I would either be unable to reacquire rights to one of the books, or that the rights could be greatly delayed. I resisted this negative suggestion. Wandering aimlessly as Hagar through a desert of file folders, a few hours later I found a letter sent the year before from the president of the company that had originally published my book. It returned to me the rights to that book.

I was thrilled, but I also began to see that breaking the boom-bust cycle was going to require lots more work. Hagar's demonstration of supply began with the well. But the achievement she reached—knowing her son as founder of important desert tribes— was not attained with the first drink of water. Further listening to God must have been needed. I began to see that a lifetime of listening to God's promptings, of resisting attacks of fear and foreboding, of knowing God's law is good, would be necessary.

Our Leader, Mrs. Eddy, defines "wilderness" as "loneliness; doubt; darkness"; she also interprets it as "spontaneity of thought and idea; the vestibule in which a material sense of things disappears, and spiritual sense unfolds the great facts of existence." ^{Science and Health, p. 597;} Like Hagar, we may see a wilderness of apparent limitation—a world calling itself material, finite, mortal, a world full of suggestions of ending and lack. But as we learn to trust God's tender care, spiritual sense will unfold "the great facts of existence." The inevitable result is an improved and improving human experience. Our needs are met.

Finally I understood that, in one sense, supply is never demonstrated "once and for all," any more than Life or Love is demonstrated once and for all. The Principle of the universe is infinite Love, ever unfolding and supplying all goodness forever. Divine Life demands demonstration every moment, unceasingly—the only way Life can be demonstrated as infinite.

"Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free," ^{John 8:32;} Christ Jesus said.

"Divine Love always has met and always will meet every human need," ^{Science and Health, p. 494.} is our Leader's assurance.

The very first time I attended a service in a Christian Science church those inscriptions on the wall had caught my attention, and at last I felt I was beginning to understand them.

The Bible Lessons, just as my friend had promised, had given me scientific ideas that enriched the human scene as "floods upon the dry ground." But the lessons had actually given me much more: a deeper understanding of the continuous source of supply and security—God. And I am deeply grateful.