The Holy Spirit Will Provide

I want to share a wonderful story of something that happened to me last year. It gave me a definitive experience of the teaching in the Course that the Holy Spirit will provide all things that we truly have need of.

My work in the publishing “wing” of the Circle means that I am very dependent on a computer. In addition, because I do quite a lot of traveling, it needs to be a laptop computer. That way, whether I am in America or England, I can continue, uninterrupted, with my work schedule.

Two years ago, when the urgent need for a laptop initially arose, I was very generously donated one by a friend of the Circle, and although it was an old one, it had everything I needed. Last October, however, I bought a new computer program for a new aspect of my publishing work. This program required quite a sophisticated computer, and after having someone check my laptop over, I was told that there was virtually no way it would be able to handle the new software.

Within days of this bad news, the laptop suddenly started to behave very oddly, and very soon it finally “died” on me. Disaster! Now I had no computer at all! And with the Circle’s finances being so tight, I wasn’t sure how I was going to get a new one.

I mentioned on our staff conference call that day that my computer had died. An hour later, Greg Mackie called me to say that his wife, Margery, had been listening to the local classical radio station, and they were announcing a one-day contest which was part of their fundraising pledge drive. They would be putting all the entrants into a draw, and the following day they would select a winner. The prize was to be a brand new laptop computer. It seemed worth a try at least, so I followed Greg’s suggestion and entered the competition.

The next day, Robert Perry decided that the Circle would just have to bite the bullet and borrow money for a new laptop for me. We went on the Internet and found one that suited the specifications I needed, and ordered it by phone. We just needed to sign the paperwork that the salesperson said he would fax through to our office. The one downside was that it would take about a week until it was with me, which was worktime I couldn’t really afford to lose.

Mid afternoon, there was a phone call for me. It was the local radio station. I thought, “I couldn’t have won the contest. They’re probably just calling me with some other promotion.” To my amazement, however, they told me I had won the laptop! What an incredible moment that was! It seemed that all my unspoken prayers had been answered—a brand new laptop computer, one that was more than sophisticated enough to run the new software I needed to run. I was told I could go and collect it as soon as I wanted to, and so I arranged to go first thing in the morning. No having to wait around for a week!

Luckily, the papers for the other computer I’d nearly bought were faxed through later, so that I hadn’t signed the papers and been locked in to buying it. Possibly the most amazing aspect of this story, though, is that the one-day competition was held on the very day my old computer died. The timing couldn’t have been more perfect!

To me this was an incredible example of what the Course teaches about the Holy Spirit supplying all the things that we truly need. I did truly need a laptop, and I did need a new one. I also needed it as soon as possible, and the Circle did truly need the thirteen hundred dollars it would have had to borrow to get me one. My under-standing is that the Holy Spirit will not fulfill our endless desires for material goodies, but that He will supply us with anything that we truly need in order to fulfill the reason we are here.

Leave, then, your needs to Him. He will supply them with no emphasis at all upon them….Under His guidance you will travel light and journey lightly, for His sight is ever on the journey’s end, which is His goal. (T–13.VII.13:1–2, 4)

[Please note: ACIM passages quoted in this article reference the Foundation for Inner Peace (FIP) Edition.]
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