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Preparedness
W. John Murray
Excerpt from:
The Gleaner
Vol. 7, No. 10
Divine Science Publishing Assoc.,
New York, July 1916."Go, borrow thee vessels abroad of all thy neighbors." - II Kings 4:3
The subject of preparedness is one that is occupying the human mind very much at the present time. We listen to orations on both sides of this very important question and we come away with a feeling that back of each speaker there is much that is true, much that is commendable and much that is worthy of adoption. We are almost distressed over the situation, because there is so much in favor of militarism and so much in favor of anti-militarism. The logic of both parties is almost unassailable. We are going to be thrashed if we are not prepared, and we are going to invite a thrashing if we do prepare.
The individual who feels that he is about to be set upon by other individuals feels a certain amount of security in providing himself with a six-shooter, but it is not really the full essence of security, because there is lurking back in his mind always, a little feeling that the other chaps may get the drop on him with their trusty weapons.
What is true of individuals, then, must be equally true of nations. No matter how well we provide ourselves with armaments of war, there is lurking back in our national mentalities a suspicion that in some way, somehow, the enemy may get in; and so in this there is not the fullest sense of security.
If one man should say to another man who is carrying a six-shooter, "Dispose of it and put your absolute trust and confidence in the protecting power of Divine Love," he would be inclined to take the matter as a joke and laugh at it, unless he were really alive to the spiritual necessity of things. The idea of an intangible thing like Divine Love protecting an individual against other individuals who are bent on his destruction, is too absurd for acceptance, too ridiculous to think about.
If a man should rise today in the Congress of the United States and through that body, ask the nation to disarm and throw itself absolutely and unqualifiedly and entirely upon the protection of that Infinite Love which is God, he would be regarded as a foolish idealist. So, perhaps, it is better that we refrain from telling the man with the six-shooter to put it up and depend upon God for his protection, when he is not yet ready for a great spiritual truth. It may perhaps be just as well for our statesmen to keep quiet on this very important subject until the nation, which is composed of individuals who carry six-shooters, and every other nation on the face of the earth, is thoroughly alive to the great protecting power of the Infinite; because really it seems like a waste of words for peace advocates to be suggesting to other men the necessity and the wisdom of disarmament, and going about trusting to some unseen power which they know not of.
Preparedness is a necessity, a giant necessity, but there is preparedness and preparedness; and if we can take our thoughts off these great national and international issues and bring them down to ourselves as individuals, and study preparedness as it applies to our particular personal experiences, it may be that we shall be saved a great deal of anxiety and apprehension concerning the future of nations, a great deal of anxiety and apprehension concerning the proximity of war in this country with other countries; it may be that we shall be able to detach ourselves for the moment from these great, tremendous, universal issues and get down where we belong for the moment; just to ourselves.
Of course, it may seem rather selfish to be considering our personal difficulties when such great, universal troubles are at our door. We may feel as if we are called upon really to discuss these vital questions, but may it not be sometimes, in discussing these very vital questions, there is more of curiosity than real interest? Sometimes the man who sits around the stove in the corner grocery store discussing war would not be nearly so anxious to go to war if it came about. It is so easy for us to discuss these things so far off, simply because they are great clouds on the horizon.
What is our duty, really? First, it seems to me that a man's duty is to make the best and the most of his own life; because it is only in so far as a man is able to make the best and the most of his own life that he becomes a real factor in society, a real unit in the great whole of things which is making for eternal progress, notwithstanding these wretched wars that go on.
Preparedness is a something that concerns you individually, and because it is, you have been preparing in many ways for your own personal betterment and for your own personal happiness and for your own personal prosperity, knowing that no one else will prepare for you, knowing that the nation as such, as big as it is, will not labor very intelligently or very diligently for your own personal prosperity, because that is a something which rests wholly with you. Yes, though you fight for it and almost die for it and are incapacitated from future lucrative employment as a result, your pension may be so meagerly small that you wonder if the big thing takes care of the little thing very well after all.
It has been my sad misfortune to see on Waterloo Bridge and other places, men maimed for life begging for bread. Tommy was all right in the trenches, but after the thing is over, Tommy is a mere speck in the great thing.
And so, while I would not destroy the idea of patriotism in the human heart, because I think that would be quite impossible; while I would not for a moment set aside the great thing which is worth while, namely, the love of country, the love of humanity and love of justice; I would have the individual doing the thinking on his own account, for himself, even though it appear in the beginning to be just a trifle selfish; because after all, I say, if you do not take care of yourself, there are few in the world who are willing to do it for you. The nation won't, so if you have any such delusion as that, get away from it. The nation, as such, gives to you an opportunity to make a living. Every nation does this, but it is up to you to do it. So preparedness, then, is to be a purely personal thing.
We read the little account of the widow who had been reduced to abject poverty. Her husband owed a debt to those in authority, and those in authority were availing themselves of an existing law to seize upon her children as bonds for the debt which was not paid. It was not sufficient that this poor member of society should lose her husband through death, but now the authorities should seize upon her children, who were the only visible means of support she had, and use them and their labor to the end of paying this debt which her husband had contracted before his death and had not met.
Being a godly woman, she turned to a man of God, to the prophet, as most people do in their extremity; and Elisha asked her what she had, what there was remaining out of the estate. "A pot of oil," she said, "just a pot of oil." "Then," he said, "go, borrow thee vessels of thy neighbors, empty vessels; not a few. And when thou art come in, shut the door upon thee and upon thy sons, and pour out into all those vessels."
Now that seemed almost as silly as to tell a man to put up his six-shooter when he is afraid of another man; almost as foolish as to tell a country to disarm when all the other countries on the face of the earth are armed to the teeth. Why should a woman take the empty vessels into the room and begin to pour of the full vessel into the empty vessels? What would she gain thereby? What would she profit? Naturally those arguments rose in the woman's mind. The question with her was not a question of pouring oil from the one vessel into a lot of other vessels, but just simply a question of rising above poverty.
But the man of God knew what he was doing. He was resorting to a higher law than she understood, and all he asked of her was obedience, and she was sufficiently sophisticated in the law of God to be obedient at least, to that which she could not understand, and so she did like many women of Israel in that day - she was obedient to the prophet. She went into the room and the oil multiplied.
The lesson here is first, obedience; second, preparedness of a kind that is higher than the preparedness that we talk so much about. She had been praying for an increase of her substance and like all of us, her substance had been gradually lessening until she had come down to this lonely pot of oil, which she no doubt was just cherishing with all the power of one who thought that when it was gone she would have nothing left at all.
She had prayed and prayed intently, but she had not prepared for the answer to her prayers. If it came, what would she have to put it in? What was there to receive it? She had prayed for abundance, but she had feared poverty. She had prayed for increase, but she saw persistent decrease going on. The prophet knew that the only way to bring about an answer to her petition, the only way to better her condition in life, was to change the current of her thoughts, adding to prayer, preparation for the thing being prayed for, - a form of preparedness that invites the thing we desire, a getting ready for it, so to speak, and then having it flow naturally and normally and without trouble or torment.
The increase was not due to any other law than the higher law which says that a thing standing still never increases. A bottle of oil, cherished because it is the last bottle in the house, will not increase by reason of being cherished any more than a dollar squeezed in the palm of the hand will grow. It is the divine law of circulation - it had to be set in motion. There must be, according to the prophet's idea, something doing as well as something praying. She must pray for increase, but she must get ready for it. She must get vessels, and it is very significant that the flow of oil does not cease until there are no more vessels to fill. The goodness of God never ends so long as we are willing to receive it, so long as there is that preparedness of the soul which reaches out for the goodness of God and attracts it in all of its abundance. It only ceases when there are no more vessels.
In the third chapter of the second book of Kings there is another wonderful incident related. The king of Israel had gone out to seize upon the king of Moab because the king of Moab had refused to pay his tribute. With him he had taken two other kings, the object being to vanquish the king of Moab and seize upon his treasures as just payment for bills long rendered and long due.
For seven days the king of Israel and his two allies traveled across the wilderness and then camped, only to discover that in the place where they camped there was water for neither man nor beast; and over there was the fortress of the king of Moab. Men who having nothing to drink and horses who have nothing to drink can neither travel nor fight, and so the king of Israel became depressed and dejected. To go back was impossible. He was seven days away from his base of supplies. He was just one day from the fortress of the king of Moab. If the king of Moab should know that the king of Israel and his armies were starving for water, it would be a very easy matter to swoop down upon them and demolish them, great and powerful as they were; and in his despair the king of Israel cried out for some relief.
It was a cloudless sky and a hot day and there was no evidence of water anywhere in the great desert. In this moment of distress, one of the men of the army came forward and said, "Elisha the prophet is in this vicinity." Someone always seems to come along and tell us in the hour of our extremity that near us is a man of God; and the king of Israel with the king of Judah and the other king, went off in search of Elisha. Presently they found him. They poured out their tale of woe. The first thing that Elisha did to the king of Israel was to rebuke him for his apostasy, for his having turned his back upon his God in his days of prosperity, for having left God until the very last thing - a rebuke which we all merit, really. The prophets did not spare kings any more than they spared peasants.
The king of Israel accepted the rebuke, and then Elisha said to him, "Make ditches in the valley. Make ditches." Now in those days they made ditches in valleys for the purpose of being filled with water during the rainy season. From these ditches men and horses and cattle generally were refreshed and invigorated. Make ditches in a valley that is as dry as the desert of Sahara! Make ditches on a red-hot day with the sun shining in the heavens and not a cloud to indicate the approach of rain! Get ready! You know something about the law of preparedness, so far as your horses and your military are concerned, so far as your ammunition is concerned, but you don't understand the law of preparedness on its higher plane.
There must have been some questioning in the minds of the kings. There must have been some argument going on mentally. "Why should we make ditches in Death Valley, a place where rain is rarely ever known to fall?" But obedience was the divine requirement, and so we find the Israelites to a man turning out into the valley and digging ditches all day long under a broiling sun; and in the sweat of their brows they dug ditches, and when night came they retired to their tents to sleep the sleep of weary men. In the morning, we are told, the ditches were filled with water.
Now this may sound like a fairy tale to those who do not believe in miracles, to those who do not believe in the operation of a higher law than we common people understand. But it is the illustration of what always takes place, always must take place, when men will actually prepare for the things they are praying for.
How many of us prepare for the thing we are praying for? We pray for health and we are honest in our prayer for it, but do we always prepare for its fulfillment in our physical economy? We pray for health but we are afraid of the consequences of our present malady. We pray for health but we resort to everything but the spiritual means to procure it.
The spiritual means of procuring health are so intangible, so incomprehensible. It is like expecting rain from a cloudless sky on a red-hot day, to believe a man should be healed by the power of thought alone without drugs and medication. That is so out of the ordinary that when a patient goes to a practitioner or a modern prophet, as we might speak of him, and is told to dispense with his drugs and rely absolutely upon the intangible and invisible power of the Holy Spirit to heal him, I can imagine there is just as much questioning going on in his mind as there was in the days of the king of Israel. "How shall these ditches be filled since there is no evidence of approaching rain?" "How are we to be healed unless this man rubs us or gives us something or does something to us that is physical and material and tangible? How is this healing going to take place unless we can watch the operation of the healing with our physical eye?"
There are the questions. A man or woman may be in the valley of financial difficulty, praying for relief from the pressure of finance, and like the widow who hugged her last vessel of oil, that man or woman may be clinging to the last few remaining dollars in the bank with the tenacity that is born of absolute despair.
Some time ago such a case occurred. Things looked black and gloomy in this particular valley of finance. Prayers had gone up without ceasing, but every day the man went to his office and expected nothing but bills. He dreaded to open his mail, knowing just what would fall out of each envelope. It meant a picture of more bills and a reminder of other bills that had been sent long ago. He clung to these few dollars which he knew were not sufficient to pay the big bills or even to provide a roof to shelter his family.
Such a man, like the king of Israel, turns to a modern prophet and asks what he shall do. He is told to dig ditches; dig ditches - to prepare for the grandest things that he has ever experienced in his life; to get ready for a more profitable business than he has ever done in his life. It sounds strange, unusual and absurd. What does the prophet say? "Take those few remaining dollars you have in the bank and advertise."
How many men have feared to advertise and yet have expected, through their prayers, that it would be known to the public that they were on earth and had goods on their shelves? They have prayed for success but they had feared poverty. The thing that God answers is the thing that is in the heart, not the thing that is on the lips of a man. If a man has a prayer for success on his lips and a terrible fear and dread of failure in his heart, that is the thing that is going to come to him by the law of attraction. The prophet knew that the only way to correct that fear is to get the man to dig ditches, to do something, to reach out after the thing that he is praying for, literally reach out for it, to do something out of the ordinary, something unusual.
Years ago, one of the largest concerns in this country - at least I have had it from a very good authority - a concern that you are acquainted with because you have seen their advertisements everywhere - Enoch Morgan Sons' Sapolio - got to the place where it seemed as if the few thousand dollars they had in the bank would have to be paid to their creditors and they disorganize and disband and go out completely. There was a meeting of the board one day and the majority were in favor of doing this very thing, but one intrepid soul must have had a prophetic vision, for he said, "We ought to do one more thing before we give up." They listened to him, and this was his plan: To take every dollar that was in the bank and to put it into an advertising campaign. They were filled with fear, but he finally won. By the very strength of his character and by the very poise and power of his personality, he moved the others in his direction. The thing was done, and from that day to this sapolio has been a paying proposition.
There is such a thing as hiding one's light under a bushel. There is such a thing as concealing one's best qualities. There is such a thing as being hyper-modest. I do not advocate immodesty in business or in anything else, but I believe that whatever is good or worth while is worth bringing to the attention of the people.
Jesus did not advertise in the daily papers, some of the churches tell us. But he advertised his goods by going up and down the villages and cities of the world of that day. He advertised not only by preaching about his goods, but actually delivering them. He advertised by performances in the market places. He let the world know that he was upon the earth. He had no mock modesty; howbeit, he had some sense of the fact that the Father was greater than he. On the other hand, he recognized the fact that he and the Father were one.
You remember when the people followed him out into the wilderness and were hungry and his disciples came to him, saying "We have a great number here and they are hungry. Shall we send them back to their homes?" "No," he said, "feed them. Take care of them. They have come out here for a good purpose and now we will feed them, not only spiritually, but in the way that they can best understand." "But," they said, "we have only five loaves and a few small fishes." He said, "Make them sit down in groups of five, ten and a hundred."
Now here we see preparedness with a vengeance - nothing in sight but five small loaves and two small fishes, and making this great multitude sit down in groups of five, ten and a hundred, in order that they might be more expeditiously served. Remember that he made them sit down first. They must get ready for the thing that is going to come their way. They must get ready with all their heart and soul and mind and body, and then the thing will gravitate in their direction, just as responsibility gravitates in the direction of any man who is willing to assume it.
They sat down and they were fed, but they wouldn't have been fed if they hadn't sat down. Their very mental attitude would have offset the thing they craved, the thing they desired. If they had stood there and argued and questioned and worried about the situation, as to how the thing was going to be met, they would have defrauded themselves; and this is just what so many people do today. So many of our own people in Divine Science, who ought to know better, sit down and just wonder and marvel how this particular experience of theirs is going to be overcome, how the finance to meet this peculiarly pressing situation is going to come. They are thinking of this person or that person and the other person and a group of persons, and they can't see how it can humanly come; and then perhaps in their desperation the king of Israel is driven to the prophet within them. The reasoning intellect is driven to the divine intuition. The human inclinations of thought are silences in those quiet moments when the soul finds its comfort and its solace and its vision in the realization of the presence of God.
The prophet is only a man who knows a little more of the divine law than we, that is all. The prophet is one who knows that there are operations of divine law on higher planes of consciousness than the ordinary rude man of the world understands. He doesn't create anything, he simply brings already existing things into manifestation. He simply proves that things never grow by standing still, but circulation is the divine law. You all know that in the money world, but if you are cherishing your last dollar, if you are hugging it, you don't know anything about circulation. You are afraid. Yea, though you pray for abundance and still keep that fear in your hearts, your last dollar will presently be taken away from you. Some unexpected something arises out of the blue and calls and demands that dollar and you have to give it up, and yet you were reserving it for something else. How often it has happened to us.
Dig ditches. If you are not satisfied with your lot in life, if it is not what you feel you are entitled to as the sons and daughters of God, don't content yourselves with merely praying about the situation. Go into the silence often and feel and know your unity with that Divine Opulence which is God, and then get ready. Do something. Reach out; take another room. Of course, it all sounds foolish, but no more foolish than digging ditches or getting empty vessels. And if you will see this, you will see that all through the Old and New Testaments, every prayer that was really answered was answered because of a certain amount of mental preparedness on the part of him who prayed. It would have been folly for the man stricken with palsy to pray and pray for physical healing without preparing to get it, so he urged the man who was carrying his bed to carry him up to the roof and break through the roof and lower him into the presence of Jesus. You know that is preparedness with a certain amount of vigor to it.
Here is a woman who for eighteen years has been praying for physical healing. She has been having constant hemorrhages. She has tried all the physicians of all the schools of her day and she has been gradually growing worse. Then one day she forces her way through a crowd, pushing perhaps rudely, because people do have to push rudely in order to get through a crowd that is pressing upon some individual. Perhaps she rudely elbowed her way in until she touched the hem of the garment of the Man who she believed could cure her. That was preparedness. In her heart she was saying to herself, "If I may but touch his garment, I will be whole." It was not enough for her to pray by the roadside or in the quiet of her home. She must reach out for this thing.
And so it is with us. Preparedness is that quality of the mind that reaches out to better one's situation in life by purely legitimate means; to rise above the limitations of every kind and character; to overcome the things that make for limitation and to seize upon the great, tremendous possibilities of the human mind, to bring out the things which you desire, and which are real and necessary to your progress, to your piety, to your power.
Have you only one pot of oil in the house? Go borrow thee vessels and not a few. Have you only a few miserable dollars in the bank? Be ready to get more dollars. There is a lesson in this pouring out of oil. How many times in life we have justified ourselves in shutting up the pores of our compassion when someone more needy than ourselves has applied and appealed to us and we have said, "I have only got just so much left. If I give to you, I shall have nothing for myself." Perhaps that is the lesson that the widow needed to learn: that if she got ready to pour the little oil she had in other vessels which contained none, she might discover that the very fount from which all oil proceeds is inexhaustible and omnipresent in its abundance. All she had to do was to distribute, to circulate the little she had; because it is true that through healthy circulation everything grows, not only in pots of oil but in pots of dollars. Keep them, hug them, cherish them - will they grow? Not at all. They are like seeds in the garden which, scattered, fill the earth with grain. It is not the thing we keep that makes for prosperity, it is the thing we invest.
How many more men and women would invest if they could only overcome their sense of stupefying, paralyzing fear? How many men would broaden out into larger fields of opportunity; how many men would leave and quit their positions and go into business for themselves, and how many men would increase their business operations who are already in business if it were not for a certain sense of fear? They want to expand, they crave to expand, but inwardly they contract, through this repressing, suppressing sense of fear and dread. But the prophet says, "Dig ditches." "Get more vessels." Don't be contracting your outlay to the thing you have. Reach out; expand. That is what you are here for.
"Behold, we are the sons of God." "God created us to have dominion," says the psalm. A man is not having dominion so long as he is contracting his outlook, and so the admonition of the prophet to the king of Israel and to the woman of Israel was : to the one, "Dig ditches," and to the other, "Get vessels;" and of Jesus to the assembled multitude: "Sit down."
Get ready - that is the great thing, get ready. We have prayed for the best. We have prayed for the best, and prepared by a strange instinct of the uneducated mind for the worst, haven't we? Haven't you? Of course you have. We have prayed for the best in life and prepared for the worst; prayed for life and prepared for death; prayed for health and prepared for days of sickness; prayed for sunshine and prepared for the rainy day.
We pray for prosperity but we don't make any effort to contain it when we get it, and that is why so much of it spills over into riotous living. We don't prepare anything into which to put our increasing abundance. We don't see a place here to put it where it is going to do the most good. We pray for prosperity and we get it, legitimately or illegitimately, and it slops over into the Great White Way or any other way that comes along.
But this does not change the fact, that there is preparedness and the necessity of it. If you are praying for expansion, reach out. Advertise more. Don't be too modest about your goods, if they are worth while. If they are not worth while, get rid of them. Above all things, remember that it is only in the degree that you are prepared to receive the blessings of God that you will receive them; not in the degree that you are prepared to pray and petition and supplicate for them, but in the degree that you are prepared to dig ditches; provide vessels; and sit down, in order that Christ may feed you upon the increased abundance which is always at hand and which belongs to you as the sons and daughters of God.
(Formerly at Northwoods Divine Science Resource Center)