Have you decided that your possibilities are limited? People often do. And they experience limitation as a direct result of that decision.

A student, for example, may decide that he can't get the education he desires because his personal financial resources are limited. Following that decision, he may close himself off from exploring the avenues through which he could develop his most promising talents, and settle in for a life of frustration. But I once heard a panel of financial officers from major colleges and universities emphasize the point that choosing what institutions of learning are within your reach on the basis of cost is an invalid approach. Financing, they stressed, can be found if you are willing to persist in pursuing a vast number of possibilities. They strongly recommended that a student should first consider the kind of education that seems best to support his development, find the schools most able to provide it, apply for admission, and then—after being accepted and deciding to attend a particular institution—look for ways to finance that education. In essence, they were saying, "Decide that it's possible. Then pursue it."

Deciding what's possible determines the solutions we are open to. And as Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer of Christian Science, says in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, "Your decisions will master you, whichever direction they take" (p. 392). So it is crucial to find a sound basis on which to assess, and decide upon, what is possible. Christ Jesus points us in the right direction. He made it clear that, ultimately, things are impossible to accomplish when we try to do them in and of ourselves without regard to our inseparable relation to God, "but with God all things are possible" (see Matt. 19:24-26).

To find that all things are possible "with God," the human mind needs to yield to the spiritual laws whereby God, the all-knowing, one divine Mind, governs His spiritual creation. Otherwise we are likely to assess our possibilities on the basis of humanly prescribed circumstances, as did a man Jesus found at the pool of Bethesda. This man had been crippled with disease for thirty-eight years. He had decided he had one possible chance to be healed, but that even that was pretty slim. It was believed by many that the water in the pool of Bethesda had healing properties—yet only at a given time, when the water would occasionally get stirred up, and only for the first person to get into the pool after the water was stirred. Sick people laid on their mats on the five porches surrounding the pool, waiting day after day for their chance to be healed.

When Jesus came to this particular man and asked him if he wanted to be healed, the man spelled out his meager expectation and frustration: He had no one to help him get into the pool when the water was active, and someone always beat him to it. But Jesus set before him a new possibility: "Get up, pick up your mat, and walk." Evidently the divine authority behind what Jesus said opened the thought of the man to what is possible "with God," and with what result? "Immediately the man got well; he picked up his mat and started walking" (see John 5:1-9 in Good News Bible).

This story illustrates how a decision in favor of what's possible to man under the government of God frees us from the supposed restrictions of present circumstances and past decisions.

God is infinite Spirit, and you and I are His infinite, spiritual reflection. As what moves our thought and action is spiritual, we realize God's government and receive His provision of unrestricted good. "When man is governed by God, the ever-present Mind who understands all things," says Mrs. Eddy, "man knows that with God all things are possible. The only way to this living Truth, which heals the sick, is found in the Science of divine Mind as taught and demonstrated by Christ Jesus" (Science and Health, p. 180). This Science is revealed in the inspired Word of the Bible, and explained in Science and Health, the Christian Science textbook.

Christian Science gives us a truly sound basis for deciding what's possible to us. It shows us that we are never separated from God, to whom all things are possible, but are Mind's perfect reflection. Love, the Mind of Christ, governs by law—the law of perfect God and perfect reflection—not by chance. God could never restrict the health or abilities of His idea, man; His possibilities for maintaining and developing them are unlimited. And therefore, our possibilities for demonstrating the Science of being for the glory of God and the benefit of humanity are equally unlimited.

Have you decided that with God your possibilities for progress are unlimited? That's a sound and unrestrictive basis for pursuing unselfish goals.

Barbara M. Vining