JUST as all the terms used in Christian Science assume new meanings as our understanding unfolds, so does the word abundance take on spiritual significance as our thought ascends toward Truth. Has not many a student of Christian Science wondered why his constant prayers to lay of all his poverty went so long unanswered? And has he not discovered on the mount of revelation that the only poverty there is, is a lack of knowledge of God, and only abundance is abundance of spiritual riches?
Thus if one who understood this great truth should find himself without food in a desert, as did the Master, he would pray no doubt for his daily bread, not for an instant asking that material loaves be laid at his feet, but rather that he might have the bread of Life, the spiritual understanding which reveals God's presence and proves that His power protects, preserves, and feeds His own ideas. Such desire is true prayer, heard always of the Father, and in its ultimate it reveals that when God is understood human needs are met instantaneously, as Jesus gave example. As we turn then from our outward barrenness and seek instead to off our spiritual penury and the myriad clamps of limited thought that fetter us, we let go of the only hold that poverty has upon us and grasp the only true substance.
Poverty is of course wholly a human term, for in Science man is at the standpoint of receptivity, "a living witness to and perpetual idea of inexhaustible good" (Miscellaneous Writings, p. 83). In reality this good flows eternally from the Father direct to His child; and thus it must follow that no circumstances, no classes, or masses, brain power or position, can act as a law to affect in any way this heritage of man. One's receptivity to the truth constitutes its only open door, and the reflection of God in his thought, the spiritual qualities he manifests, alone determine its quality and quantity.
