It is almost instinctive for people, whether they consider themselves religious or not, to reach out to a higher power when they are faced with difficult situations they cannot manage alone. "O Father, please help me" is the natural prayer of almost everyone.

Christian Science enables us to pray with an expectancy that our honest desire to feel and know God's help will be answered. This Science reveals that because God, divine Love, is All-in-all, His presence is always right with us. "Are we benefited by praying?" Mrs. Eddy asks in Science and Health. And then she answers, "Yes, the desire which goes forth hungering after righteousness is blessed of our Father, and it does not return unto us void." ^{Science and Health, p. 2.}

One key to feeling God's grace is this deep desire to do better than we have been doing. And in our heart of hearts we all have this desire because our nature actually has its source in God. As Christian Science teaches, it is God, pure Love, who has created our true selfhood as His image, spiritual man. When we pray for God's help, we're really asking to be given a better understanding of our true nature—what we are in truth as God's expression—a clearer idea of all that is pure and good about us.

A wholehearted turning to God strengthens us because it shows something of our basic spirituality—that we really are God's children. In Christian Science, asking God for help indicates the presence in our consciousness of that God-derived quality of spiritual innocency. This innocence in a sense is itself the answer we're seeking. What God has to give us as His gracious answer is already within our true nature as His reflection. The more we turn to God, seeking to know ourselves as His perfect expression, the more we realize that our very being proceeds from divine Love, from intelligent Mind. In the innermost depths of our thought we hear the divine message, "My child, you are My beloved. You only need accept My love in your life." We might say that acceptance of God's gracious love toward us brings out in us a corresponding grace in all we do.

The Master, Christ Jesus, whose life so revealed what divine grace is, taught his followers to pray, "Give us this day our daily bread." ^{Matt. 6:11.} And Science and Health gives the spiritual sense of these words as "Give us grace for to-day; feed the famished affections." ^{Science and Health, p. 17.}

When we're asking for divine Love's help, we might in effect be saying, "Father, I'm hungry. My affections are starving for more of Your divine goodness in my life." And that spiritual food always comes, not because God has suddenly decided to feed us (as though He has been withholding good from us), but because we are now willing to respond with grace to all that He is giving us. We find that our real need is to demonstrate the laws of Principle that Science reveals. Thus we learn more of God's infinite and always present grace.

If we are not actually praying and striving to live in accord with divine Principle, God's gracious answer may come to us as a rebuke or severe chastising. The impossible situations we sometimes find ourselves in are often the evidence of an undisciplined thought, self-centered thinking that has not yielded its so-called reality to God. Then we may need His correcting love. In Miscellaneous Writings Mrs. Eddy writes, "Ofttimes the rod is His means of grace...." ^{Mis., p. 127.}

A young woman learned something of God's gracious rod. She was driving too fast on a suburban road and almost hit a child on a bicycle. She wanted to slow down but was so caught up in her plans for the day, and agitated thoughts about her life, that she couldn't seem to help herself. Yet almost wordlessly she was at the same time reaching out to God for help. Suddenly a policeman appeared at her side. He had observed her driving and gave her a severe rebuke and a large fine.

How grateful she was! The severity of his rebuke awakened her. She saw that many of her difficulties (not just the driving) were due to her false belief that she was a mortal who was way off from God. Unhealed impatience, outlining, human will, were false traits of character, which were no part of God's man. These errors had to yield to her spiritual innocency as the divinely governed reflection of God. Never again did she drive in that reckless manner, but she did begin to pray more fervently for "growth in grace" as Mrs. Eddy speaks of it in Science and Health: "What we most need is the prayer of fervent desire for growth in grace, expressed in patience, meekness, love, and good deeds." ^{Science and Health, p. 4.}

The Apostle Paul certainly needed God's grace in his life. He needed it when through ignorance he was persecuting the Christians. And he needed it later in his life when he himself was persecuted for teaching Christianity. That he did receive the full measure of God's supporting love is shown by what he wrote to the early Christian church at Corinth: "For I am the least of the apostles, that am not meet to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. But by the grace of God I am what I am: and his grace which was bestowed upon me was not in vain; but I laboured more abundantly than they all: yet not I, but the grace of God which was with me." ^{I Cor. 15:9, 10.}

Through the revealed truths of Christian Science, we can all feel the ever-present help of God's grace, regardless of our human circumstances, regardless of what we have or have not done, or what others seem to be doing to us. God's love is greater than circumstances. It is infinitely above human persons, and it embraces all of us as His children. If we honestly mean it and are willing to demonstrate our desire to be in accord with Him when we say, "Father, please help me," we'll realize His gracious love in our lives.

BARBARA-JEAN STINSON

The eyes of the Lord are upon the righteous, and his ears are open unto their cry.... The righteous cry, and the Lord heareth, and delivereth them out of all their troubles. The Lord is nigh unto them that are of a broken heart; and saveth such as be of a contrite spirit. Many are the afflictions of the righteous: but the Lord delivereth him out of them all.

Psalms 34:15, 17–19