Continuous Good

Our daughter had always dreamed of having a wedding "fit for a princess." And now it was over. Everything had been just right. Nine months of careful planning had culminated in a large gathering to celebrate the joys of marriage.

As the mother of the bride, I circulated among the guests after the ceremony. One friend persisted in asking, "How do you feel now that it is almost all over?" I couldn't give a definitive answer. I wasn't feeling emotional, wasn't feeling a high or a letdown. Just a quiet, satisfying joy in all the goodness present.

My friend's question stayed with me, though. How did I feel? It was grand to have all our family members together in one place. We had thanked God for bringing this lovely couple together. The music was awesome. Flowers filled the church. We felt much love.

But suddenly I realized the good I felt was something beyond the moment. Good had not begun many months ago, at the announcement of the engagement. It was not going to end as the last dish was cleared from the reception tables. I was feeling the presence of continuous good, which has its source in God.

Even for a happy event like this one, we'd had to surmount many obstacles over the course of planning it. And they all had been overcome - through praying, actually. Through appealing to God's law of unfailing good. Nothing unlike God, who is totally good, can interfere with His law. God is Love. And Love expresses love in the lives of its children.

God is always expressing Himself. The health, fullness, freshness, boundless energy, the painless being - the good we seek - are found in understanding who God is. Because this is so, happiness really isn't dependent on people or human circumstances. It is the natural outcome of understanding that divine Love is all-encompassing. That God is all good, all power, all life, all the intelligence there is to be expressed.

Early on, I had kept in mind the fact that there can be no beginning and ending to good, because God is eternal. God's law of good - the Science of Christianity - had proved to me that God is Life itself. God never dies, so good never dies. Good and death do not coexist or go hand in hand. I could pray for this event by understanding that God causes His children to reflect Life, not death. Any fear that the end of good could come - as a sudden glitch in our plans, a withdrawal of some needed element in the wedding, and so forth - was without the substance or reality of God's power.

God's goodness is continuous. And so, now that the wedding was over, there didn't need to be any letdown, any fatigue, or a period of stagnation. God was always providing what I needed for the moment and supplying good abundantly. There was no depletion of resources or energy or activity. God was still shining in all His radiant glory, just as He had been the day before.

After the wedding, I found God directing me in new paths, but I felt no longing or looking back to yesterday. The textbook of Christian Science makes the following statement: "In Colossians (iii. 4) Paul writes: 'When Christ, who is our life, shall appear [be manifested], then shall ye also appear [be manifested] with him in glory.' When spiritual being is understood in all its perfection, continuity, and might, then shall man be found in God's image" (Mary Baker Eddy, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," Pg. 325).

Even in times of trouble, the spiritual reality is God's outpouring of continuous good. In all God's creation, there are no blips on the screen, no ups and downs, no sudden jarring demands or unexpected pitfalls. Holding to this truth, we can feel God expressed in quietness, in peace, and in the orderly expression of intelligence in human affairs.

His name shall endure for ever:

his name shall be continued

as long as the sun: and men

shall be blessed in him: all

nations shall call him blessed.

Blessed be the Lord God, the

God of Israel, who only

doeth wondrous things.

Psalms 72:17, 18