Ever feel like you don't have enough to share? Maybe you feel you have to take care of yourself first and wait until you have more for yourself before sharing. This may be a justifiable concern, but it would ignore the abundance of spiritual truths that are yours to rely on right now.

Material possessions may come and go, but we can never be separate from our Father-Mother God, Spirit and Mind, nor can we be separated from His abundant and eternal goodness, Man is the immediate expression of God, His spiritual likeness.

Spiritual abundance, our only true resource, is seen in our boundless joy and in our love for ourselves and others. It is felt as spiritual intuition, the capacity to know all that we need to know at the appropriate time. God-derived thought, or intuition, transcends human reasoning and logic, and directs, comforts, and heals us. We can learn to listen to, yield to, and follow this still, small that is speaking to us constantly.

Science and Health states: "Substance is that which is eternal and incapable of discord and decay. Truth, Life, and Love are substance..." (p. 468). No one, no thing, no circumstance could ever rob us of true substance, because we can't be separated from Truth and Love. We naturally become more aware of this as we put aside thoughts that are not of God, such as fear, doubt, and limitation, and as we love more. How wonderful to know that love is something we can always afford! Whatever may seem to be going on, we can always love, just as we can always be joyful, honest, intelligent, and obedient.

Divine inspiration enables us to drop our own agendas, opinions, feelings of limitation, and instead listen for God's will, being willing to love freely and without condition, which is the way God loves us. As we do this, we can't help feeling loved.

Striving to love freely and without limitation, we may notice that thoughts come such as: "What will people think?" "This just isn't practical," or "I don't have time for this." These arguments originate in the belief of intelligence apart from God. Such limited thinking would take over and get in the way of our seeing the expression of Love and Truth. Instead, see these suggestions for what they are, and love anyway!

At one point, my husband and I were living quite far away from most of my relatives. The Thanksgiving holiday was approaching, and I decided this was the perfect time to extend my sense of family right where I was. We decided to prepare a Thanksgiving dinner and invite people who did not have family nearby. Our guest list grew until we realized we had invited twelve people to come to our very modest apartment.

Shortly after we had invited everyone, it was time for us to pay our monthly bills and balance our checking account. We found we had less than ten dollars left, which had to last us for the next few weeks, including several days beyond the holiday. Suddenly it seemed as if all this love toward our new "extended sense of family" was not very practical. Maybe we didn't have enough to share.

I mentioned this to a friend, who remarked, "Well, really, God is having you all to dinner, isn't He?" My friend explained that if divine Love was impelling me to reach out to invite others to my home, that same Love would include the provision for it to take place. I could wait on God to fill my thought with wisdom and love, including ideas of what to do and how to do it, and put aside fear and human will.

Over the next few days I did just that. Not only did we end up with enough food, dishes, a tablecloth, and flowers; we also had help from friends in learning how to stuff the turkey, and in unclogging and repairing the overworked kitchen sink and drainpipes the day of the dinner. There was so much joy and "thanks giving" at our table! Our friends commented to us for several weeks afterward what a special holiday it had been for them. We were so grateful to have true bread, true abundance, to share.

The Bible tells of a time when Christ Jesus and his disciples fed a multitude with a few loaves and a few fishes. Actually, the disciples seemed somewhat doubtful at the time that what little they had would be able to fill up such a big crowd. Jesus didn't spend any time thinking about what he didn't have; instead he gave thanks for true substance, which they did have and which would always be enough. We read in John: "When they were filled, he said unto his disciples, Gather up the fragments that remain, that nothing be lost. Therefore they gathered them together, and filled twelve baskets with the fragments of the five barley loaves, which remained over and above unto them that had eaten" (6:12, 13).

At the end of our feast, we had so much food left over that we, too, gathered up the fragments. We had all we needed until additional money came in.

"When a hungry heart petitions the divine Father-Mother God for bread, it is not given a stone,—but more grace, obedience, and love," writes Mary Baker Eddy. "If this heart, humble and trustful, faithfully asks divine Love to feed it with the bread of heaven, health, holiness, it will be conformed to a fitness to receive the answer to its desire; then will flow into it the 'river of His pleasure,' the tributary of divine Love, and great growth in Christian Science will follow,—even that joy which finds one's own in another's good" (Miscellaneous Writings, p. 127). The next time you are tempted to believe you don't have much, open your heart and find your true bounty. It will be more than enough!