UNTIL A YEAR AGO , people liked hearing about the economy. It was booming. It was robust. It was healthy. Now, the economic news presents a different picture altogether. The stock market has been up and down. Layoff notices continue to make headlines. Retrenchment is the new byword in many businesses.

This has gotten me to thinking about the history of Joseph while he was in Egypt. This can be found in the Bible's book of Genesis. Joseph warned Egypt's leader that there would be seven years of great abundance throughout Egypt, but that they would then be followed by seven years of drought. He had been made aware of this through listening to God's voice. But that wasn't all. God had inspired in Joseph a plan. There was a way to preserve life during the time of drought.

Joseph's life had been a roller coaster ride. He was the pride of his father, but his brothers sold him into slavery. He rose to prominence in his master's house, but then was falsely accused and thrown into prison. And now he was out of prison and in the king's court. He knew all too well how the pendulum of life could swing from one extreme to the other.

But despite these wild swings in Joseph's life, God had remained a constant presence and power for him. He knew from hard experience that he couldn't depend on family. He couldn't depend on his record of effective work. Or on the justice system. He couldn't depend on other people. But he could depend on God, and he did. And Joseph's fidelity to God was a reflection of God's fidelity to him. No matter how Joseph was betrayed or misused, God restored his life and caused him to prosper.

There's a difference between the human economy and the economy of God. The human fluctuates. It has good times and bad. It has ups and downs. It has employment and unemployment. The divine economy is steadfast and constant. The goodness of God, the supply of good that God gives, the activity of this good, are changeless. In Joseph's time, the human economy went from abundance to famine. Yet, in Joseph's time, the divine economy showed an unwavering equality between supply and demand. The constancy of God, the abundance of good, the intelligence and wisdom people needed to experience that good, flowed ceaselessly.

Joseph seems to have had an instinctive spiritual sense that caused him to look away from feeling like the victim of chance and injustice and loss, and back to God, the creator of all life, the source of all good, the governor of all that exists. His story shows that this ever-operative Principle we could call God is a ceaseless source of life, a ceaseless source of wisdom, a ceaseless source of good. It is this kind of realization that underlies the line in the Lord's Prayer, "Give us this day our daily bread." In other words, "Give us daily evidence of God's presence in our life—daily inspiration, daily proof of God's law in operation, daily evidence of His love. If we seek out this inspiration—listen for it—we will find it. Jesus promised this: "Ask, and it shall be given you; seek and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you: for every one that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened" (Matt. 7:7, 8).

Consider the role of the divine economy in your life. When you do, you become increasingly conscious that there is no fluctuation of good. There is an open door of opportunity constantly before you. Sometimes, to understand this point, I call up a picture of a wide double doorway, but in that doorway, there is only one door on a pivot in the middle of the opening. It can swing and block either the right side or the left side of the doorway. There is no way to block both sides of the doorway with the one door. When you close it on one side, it automatically opens on the other side.

Now, if we spend our time looking at the closed door, we won't notice that the other side is wide open to us. Sometimes when our plans fall through, or we've lost our job, resentment or fear mesmerizes us and we spend our time looking at the closed door. But no company, no per son, no economic downturn, can stop the constant appearing of God's care in our lives. There is an open door before you. You can go through it and take your next step of progress. In the Bible, the word of God says simply, "Seek ye me, and ye shall live" (Amos 5:4).

Nothing can shut off God's supply of good, the stream of health and life, the ocean of divine Love, that comes to us all from God. There is no want in the divine economy, there is only abundance.

Jesus proved this with bread and fish. His disciples could only see the meagerness of their resources—five loaves, two fish, and thousands of people to feed. Jesus looked up. To Spirit, to the infinite and unlimited goodness of God. He shared this vision and understanding of God's complete and abundant care for everyone with his disciples. And they shared what they gained with the people. They were all fed, with a lot left over.

The human economy is variable, filled with chance and change. It is marked by an inequality that is obviously unjust. In a book called Unity of Good, Mary Baker Eddy objected to these lines from an old hymn:

The objection? "Now if it be true that God's power never waneth, how can it be also true that chance and change are universal factors,—that man decays? Many ordinary Christians protest against this stanza of Bowring's, and its sentiment is foreign to Christian Science. If God be changeless goodness, as sings another line of this hymn, what place has chance in the divine economy?" (p. 26).

What place indeed! The divine economy is a manifestation of God's unchanging and effective love for all creation. We live in this universe of good. We can trust God more and find that our lives are governed and blessed by His laws. Science and Health explains, "Creation is ever appearing, and must ever continue to appear from the nature of its inexhaustible source" (p. 507). Here, the facts of the true economy are revealed, and as we understand them better, they will be revealed tangibly in our lives.