Trusting Truth that’s solid as rock

One thousand feet up with another thousand feet to go on a technical climb is not the time to wonder whether the rope will hold in its anchor. Nor is it the time to worry about how much slower it is to climb as a party of three. Nor is it the time to regret leaving behind extra clothing and food. No. Instead of fear, worry, and regret, it’s time to trust in something greater than ourselves.

When I was in that situation on a technical climb on Half Dome in Yosemite National Park, the something greater that I leaned on was God.

God, I had learned in Christian Science, is the divine Mind – the divine intelligence – that guides, guards, and inspires all right movement. Each one of us has God-given dominion over fear, and the ability to think and act consistently with our true nature as His children, the spiritual reflection of God.

My preparations for this climb had included not only physical training but also prayer. On that mountain, I knew I could trust God’s thoughts to help me surmount fear, concerns about my ability, or feelings of fatigue. Whatever we needed to do to safely make progress, I could trust divine intelligence to move things forward in a progressive way.

Learning to rock climb involved learning to trust – and learning to distinguish between what was trustworthy and what was not when surmounting challenges. It’s a metaphor for life. When we trust the right things, everyone goes up higher.

We trust what we know. The more we know of God as the all-loving, supreme, and perfect Principle governing all existence, the more we are able to listen to and trust God.

Moses was a leader who trusted God through all kinds of trying and threatening circumstances. He called God “the Rock” and said, “his work is perfect: ... a God of truth and without iniquity, just and right is he” (Deuteronomy 32:4). Like Moses, we can find God to be as solid as rock. We do this through prayer that enables us to become fixed on God’s supremacy rather than fixated on challenges.

I’ve found it helpful to consider something Jesus said when his disciples were discouraged by a problem they had failed to heal. Jesus told them that if they had even just “faith as a grain of mustard seed,” they could move mountains (Matthew 17:20).

Mary Baker Eddy, the discoverer of Christian Science, writes in her book “Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures,” “Faith, if it be mere belief, is as a pendulum swinging between nothing and something, having no fixity. Faith, advanced to spiritual understanding, is the evidence gained from Spirit, which rebukes sin of every kind and establishes the claims of God” (p. 23).

It’s not blind faith, but spiritual understanding, that is needed. And we don’t need mountains of it to move a mountain-sized problem. Just a grain of understanding of spiritual reality enables thought to shift toward God, which brings about healing.

After Jesus healed the problem that had foiled his disciples, he mentioned the importance of “prayer and fasting” (Matthew 17:21). I’ve come to think of this as prayer that seeks to bring consciousness in line with God, who is divine Truth; and a “fasting” from what the material senses believe to be true.

And what is that spiritual reality that divine Truth reveals? It includes our true, spiritual identity as God’s offspring – not mortals susceptible to crises, but the expression of divine qualities such as integrity, unclouded wisdom, and harmony.

This kind of “prayer and fasting” has led to many healings in my life. And it also helped me on my climb up Half Dome. Prayer helped me know that each of us on the climb was safely cared for and companioned by divine Love. And even though the route we had taken was exposed, “fasting” kept me from entertaining the “what ifs” – the doubts and fears and frustrations suggested by a material, rather than spiritual, perspective.

Trusting God thought by thought, handhold by handhold, move by move, we did get to the top! We summited around dusk and ended up spending a cold but starry night up there. When dawn arrived, we were treated to a most spectacular display as light stretched across the Yosemite Valley – from Half Dome to El Capitan and beyond.

Mrs. Eddy wrote, “Step by step will those who trust Him find that ‘God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble’” (Science and Health, p. 444). Each of us can trust God step by step and feel secure on the timeless rock of divine Truth.

Inspired to think and pray further about fostering trust around the globe? To explore how people worldwide are navigating times of mistrust and learning to build trust in each other, check out the Monitor’s “Rebuilding trust” project.