A clergyman friend once told me how his mother, a devout Christian, always tithed to her church. They had an apple orchard and sold most of their apples. One tenth of the proceeds went to their church. One spring there was a late frost, and their fellow growers' apple crops were lost. When people asked "Why are your apples all right?" my friend's mother would reply, "Perhaps it's because we tithe." My friend told me, "Mother trusted God to keep His word as He promised in the Bible in the book of Malachi: 'Bring ye all the tithes into the storehouse, that there may be meat in mine house, and prove me now herewith, saith the Lord of hosts, if I will not open you the windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive it. And I will rebuke the devourer for your sakes, and he shall not destroy the fruits of your ground.'" Mal. 3:10, 11
The experience of my friend and his mother illustrates a fascinating fact—that there is a spiritual law which operates universally in individual consciousness. And it blesses all those who abide by it. When people understand this law and let it guide them, they express unselfishness, thoughtfulness, and so on, and have absolute trust in God, good. God's law ensures that blessings will follow. Whenever we express our true nature as God's child through kindness or unselfishness, we feel a glow of joy welling up within us; we participate in God's law in action. God's universal law of good is not confined to any particular person or religious denomination. It makes no difference whether one is a Christian, a Muslim, or a Jew, for God doesn't see us in religious pigeonholes. How could a religious "tag"—a human label—have the slightest effect on a spiritual law?
Human conceptions of God, however, do need to become more spiritual. Evidence of the action of His law and the blessings it brings abounds in the Bible—Moses finding water in a desert land; Daniel being safe in a den of lions; Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego finding themselves unharmed in the middle of a burning fiery furnace; and the many accounts of people who were healed of physical infirmities. Orthodox theology commonly classifies such events as "miracles," and natural scientists generally ignore them. The prevalence of such attitudes is one reason why the true significance of these occurrences has been obscured and the operation of God's law has been largely unrecognized.
