Could This Be Deliverance?

MY husband and I had just pulled onto the highway when we spotted a turtle. The turtle had crossed the road, but was struggling to get over the cement barrier at the edge. We stopped, and my husband quickly lifted the turtle to safety. While the turtle was in midair, his legs were flailing frantically. From my perspective I could see that his deliverance was at hand. But it must have felt like the most dangerous of all possible situations to the turtle.Isn't this often what our own times of deliverance feel like? Take the children of Israel, for example. They were led by Moses into the wilderness, we read in Exodus. When they faced the Red Sea it appeared that going through the sea itself was the most dangerous of situations. And yet that was the very safest path they could take once God had opened the way for them, dividing the waters so that they went through "upon the dry ground. Your deliverance and mine is as assured as that of the children of Israel. Why? Because we are God's children too. Our genuine identity is spiritual. This is what Christ Jesus came to show us. Luke's Gospel tells of Jesus' reading these words from "the book of the prophet Esaias: "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to se t at liberty them that are bruised, to preach the acceptable year of the Lord. And then Jesus pointed out to his listeners, "This day is this scripture fulfilled in your ears. With Christly authority Jesus destroyed the lie of mortality and so brought out the immortal evidence of man as the perfect child of God. This perfect image and likeness of the creator, God, is, in reality, our identity. But we must prove this through spiritual living. God has promised to care for His children. Our part of the covenant relationship is to understand that God, divine Love, is All and is always caring for His creation. As we do this, we're more willing to abandon any fear that would keep us from recognizing that man is the perfect, spiritual expression of God. Then we understand more clearly that we are God's children, and we are better able to find our own deliverance from whatever threatening circumstances confront us. And we are able to be more trustful, so that even if the deliverance appears unconventional or is not exactly what we would have planned, still we know God will not forsake us. Our family discovered this fact during the past year. A family member who had been having a severe problem seemed to be making progress toward resolving the difficulty when, without warning, everything fell apart. It seemed as though the family faced the most dangerous moment imaginable right then. We had prayed faithfully to support this family member and to see that he was God's child. At this time of crisis, then, we chose to take the bigger perspective and trust that God's certain deliverance was at hand. Within a short time the crisis was averted and complete healing was evident. In a poem, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, Mary Baker Eddy, speaks of the saving Christ: "Strongest deliverer, friend of the friendless,/Life of all being divine . . . . No matter what trouble we face, we can turn to the spiritual facts of our identity as children of God and find that God is at hand to deliver us. As we view our life from this spiritual perspective, we can remain calm, serene, and joyous as our deliverance unfolds.