God’s amazing care
I had the most amazing thing happen the other night! Now I’ve had many many instances where I’ve felt God, divine Love was taking care of me — where it was clearly evident to me — but I’ve never had anything happen quite like this.
I had helped to organize getting some students to a dinner together and then to an inspirational talk with other students their age. I was giving one of the students a ride to the dinner, when on the way there my car just slowly died. The radio went dead then the lights dimmed, then the car slowed, all of which gave me time to pull over in a good place to park, and then it just died.
I never even had time to think about what I was going to do or how we were going to get to the dinner on time. Just as the car was dying my cell phone rang. It was another young friend who was able to get off work earlier than he thought and wanted directions to where we were having dinner. He was about two minutes from where I was stalled, and came by to pick me and my passenger up.
What was truly amazing to me is that it was all just like clock work, as if someone else was in control of everything and just naturally taking care of everything without any elapsed time. Now the thing is I’ve always felt sure that there is a greater than myself in control of my life, and seen many instances of it, but never quite like that, where I didn’t even have to think about anything, it just all happened.
We got to the dinner on time with all the groceries I had and the cookies my young friend was contributing. As I said, we had missed a beat. Also, then, the friend who picked me up was able to supply the transportation to the talk for a group of the students that I had planned on providing transportation for. He also had time in his schedule to take me back to my car where AAA came with a tow truck to take it to a repair shop.
In addition, I had an appointment the next day that I didn’t know how I was going to get to, but when I called the repair shop to see if they would have the car done in time, which was doubtful, he offered me a loaner car.
Now I realize this all might sound a little trite, but I’m feeling that it is a real sign that there truly is a controlling, governing Principle of the universe, which is Love, as Mary Baker Eddy discovered in Jesus teachings and actions. This was a zero stress situation.
Is it just luck or coincidence? I really don’t think so. I do feel inside me a peace, like God’s hand is in it. In Mrs. Eddy writes, “Divine Love always has met and always will meet every human need.”
I’ve seen that happen too many times in this human experience to doubt it, but this was exceptional.
Photo by Arto Teras / cc by sa 1.0 fi
OK Mark – but if God was in charge, why did your car die in the first place?
It’s these kind of questions that make me bang my head on the wall.
Hi M
That’s a good question. It’s not one that would have occurred to me so I’m glad you asked. It wouldn’t have occurred to me because I’ve never thought of God as operating from a material or physical standpoint. In other words, what God sees is going on is quite different than the illusion we believe in. We tend to see ourselves and everything else as material, temporal, limited and so forth. Our crude and best sense of transportation is to get into a car and drive somewhere as a mortal. God sees only what is real, what He made, His unlimited spiritual ideas — you and me — moving in the harmony of Spirit without material accompaniments.
I think that is what Jesus was showing us by his example — is that the real universe is spiritual and perfect and unlimited, where we are not limited by mortality or space and time. He consequently healed incurable disease, fed multitudes with a little food, stilled storms and even traveled across the sea in an instant — not to mention raised himself from death.
God is taking care of us from a spiritual basis far and above our material conceptions of things. Our crude inventions are simply counterfeit concepts of what is real and they are limited, destructible, temporary. But despite our crude concepts, God is still seeing only His spiritual creation and helping us based on laws of Spirit, not matter. The goal in my story was get to the event, be safe, and have everything taken care of. And it was God’s grace that made that happen even in this crude material false construct.
Someday we won’t need cars to move from place to place in, cars that have to be fixed and filled up with gas. We will be clear that matter doesn’t have the substance it now appears to have and we will be able to move about as Jesus did at times.
In my case, even though I’m still in a mental place where I think I’m a physical being needing a car to get around, God was meeting my need to get where I was going in a way that I can accept and understand for now. And the broken down car, did not get in the way of the good that needed to happen that evening. And if I had been in the middle of nowhere, I’m sure there would have been a way to get where I needed to go.
Thanks Mark for that answer. It helps me correct the tendency to think that Infinite Mind thinks of us as limited mortals in a weird scary birth growth death existence. Our concepts of infinite goodness all in all are way too small. The leap of faith is a leap indeed.