Probability or Divine Law?
ON a local radio station, there is a program that invites single people to call up and describe themselves in the hope of attracting a compatible date or potential marriage partner. From time to time the host has said that this process is really ``a numbers game.'' In other words, if someone is lucky, there will be at least one person out of the thousands listening who will be compatible with that individual. I've thought a lot about the ``numbers game'' approach to things, about mentally lining up everything from career possibilities to potential friends, and the feeling that if you have enough possibilities, at least one of them will work out.
Obviously, there's nothing wrong with thinking ahead when it comes to important decisions. And the freedom to choose among a number of options is a good thing. The issue is really how we're viewing life. Are we thinking that we're dependent on a law of probability? Or do we have recourse to something more dependable?
While human experience by its very nature would have us believe we're governed by chance, the Bible points us to God's government and to the operation of divine law. It points us to the fundamental truth of our inseparability from our creator. The Psalmist's words ``Commit thy way unto the Lord; trust also in him; and he shall bring it to pass'' indicate the certainty of God's care when we look to Him for help.
God doesn't require large numbers of possibilities to care for His offspring. Nor is an apparent lack of options beyond the reach of divine law. God knows each of us individually as His perfect, spiritual offspring, inseparable from His care. As we glimpse God's care we'll begin to see that divine law supersedes even the most authoritative opinions of the human mind and that obedience to divine law is able to adjust what needs adjusting in our lives. We'll find that we can be guided not merely to a range of possibilities but to exactly what's appropriate for us.
In a new line of freelance work I've taken up recently, I've found that prayer has brought fresh opportunities. On the other hand, when I've lapsed into expecting employment to come only from a limited number of possible sources, very little has come my way. I have, in effect, been shutting out God's abundance. A lesson I'm learning is that, as the book of James says so eloquently, ``Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.''
Human thought sets up its own limited plan about how things may work out. It looks to numbers and a so-called law of probability, hoping for the best. Yet the one God is infinitely above the limits of such theories. Christ Jesus said, as Luke's Gospel tells us, ``Fear not, little flock; for it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom.''
When I've let God show me how to follow through on my legitimate, worthy desires, they've been fulfilled, often in ways and at times that I couldn't have calculated. They've happened in the right way -- God's way -- and at the right time.
Referring to God as Truth, Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, writes in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, ``When we wait patiently on God and seek Truth righteously, He directs our path.'' Waiting on God through prayer and through growing worship of Him alone, we'll find that we're governed by divine law. And we'll reap the blessings which that law confers.
