Inspiration, Not Resignation

HAVE you ever felt that you've tried every possible way to solve a problem and yet you're still running into obstacles? This can give rise to that ``I guess I'm going to have to live with it'' feeling, as the weight of resignation settles down. Yet new inspiration can flow from the knowledge that God -- far from saddling us with an existence laden with such problems -- is actually providing the wisdom and intelligence necessary to solve them. This intelligence isn't hidden in some dark corner of God's being; actually, it is an active quality supplied constantly by God to His offspring. He is the one infinite Mind, and we're inseparable from that Mind.

Since our true being is the spiritual image of God, we're naturally on the receiving end of the divine wisdom and intelligence that characterize God's nature. We may feel that we just aren't receiving the inspiration we need -- especially if we are in the midst of a dead-end situation. Yet a clearer sense of who we really are and of our unity with all the intelligence belonging to God can help remedy this.

When we feel resigned to something that's obviously not good, don't we feel separated from God, as though we were, after all, just a part of the unintelligent ``dust of the ground'' out of which Adam was supposedly formed? (See Genesis 2:7.) Of course, this is not the man described in the first chapter of Genesis -- man made in God's image.

That account in Genesis, chapter two, and in chapter three when Eve is deceived by a talking serpent, serves to throw light on the true account, in which man is the perfect creation of God, the outcome of supreme wisdom and intelligence.

So, when we feel we are facing a dead end, we can find new inspiration by looking away from the picture of man as a mortal creature with limited intelligence and toward the spiritual reality of man as the very image of God, the expression of infinite intelligence. ``Where shall wisdom be found? and where is the place of understanding?''1 asks the book of Job. Later in Job we find this answer: ``There is a spirit in man: and the inspiration of the Almighty giveth them understanding.''2

When we meet what we consider a dead-end situation, the question is, How are we going to view it? As an inescapable reality with little hope of an answer? We might instead see it as another symptom of the unintelligent, dead-end nature of material existence as a whole. The remedy is found in the Christlike view of life exemplified by Jesus and confirmed through his healing works. As Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, says, ``Inspired thought relinquishes a material, sensual, and mortal theory of the universe, and adopts the spiritual and immortal.''3

Within this inspired view of man we will find new hope and fresh energy. We will discover that, spiritually considered, we are at the very source of wisdom and intelligence, able to deal successfully with whatever challenge confronts us. From this standpoint, there is no resignation.

1Job 28:12. 2Job 32:8. 3Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 547. You can find more articles like this one in the Christian Science Sentinel, a weekly magazine.