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Stay Close To God, Safe In Love Leave a comment
Counting Our Blessings Leave a comment
When I was growing up, the Thanksgiving Day service in the Church of Christ, Scientist, our family attended was the one we never missed. It wasn’t uncommon for that service to be a very moving occasion, and it still isn’t, as many who come give thanks aloud for their blessings, such as finding a home or job, experiencing a physical healing through prayer, or having good friends and neighbors. There are also testimonies about changes of heart and character—such as overcoming fears or anger, or making efforts to be more patient, honest, or wise—that have meant even more.
I’ve also heard testimonies from some who faced especially tough challenges, such as the sudden loss of a loved one, bankruptcy, crime, moral failings, severe illness. The gratitude from these speakers has seemed deepest of all—not for the losses or suffering, but because those hardships compelled serious searching for answers in heartfelt prayer and humble listening to God for direction and hope. You could tell this search for meaning and comfort was more important than anything else. So their gratitude went straight to God for God and for the love and goodness that are the very nature of ever-present divine Life and Spirit.
We’re living in a time when so many people are facing the most difficult situations they ever have, when sorrow has seemed to be everywhere and gratitude appears unreasonable. And yet this has also been a year of the most extraordinary courage and unselfishness, amazing generosity and love, strangers saving the lives of strangers, opera singers serenading quarantined neighbors, the Eiffel Tower doing a nightly light show thanking first responders, and school teachers and parents discovering new creativity and endurance in helping children.
When the chips have been down—very, very down—so many have intuitively looked up, risen higher, fought against oppressors such as disease, fear, self-centeredness, and hate by resorting to goodness and courage, grace and kindness, and turning heavenward. Where do these impulses come from? They come from realizing in some measure that we’re not the earthbound mortals we’ve assumed. We are, in fact, spiritual—made from Love and made to love by God, immortal Life. We are grander and holier and more like God than we’ve imagined or been taught by the world. The evidence of this, though not necessarily universal, has still been unmistakable.
Knowing our need of God is a blessing, and brings a restoration of hope, as well as answers.
When circumstances turn us to the Divine, even as a last resort, we begin to discover that the deific Mind, the one Spirit, perfect Love, can do all things for us. The more we realize that we are able—not of ourselves but through divine Love—to solve our problems, see the way forward, and meet our needs, the more we know our need of God. This is a blessing, because we will find there a restoration of hope, as well as our answers. …
Click here to read the full text of this article, Counting Our Blessings, by Ethel A. Baker which is published in the November 23, 2020 issue of the Christian Science Sentinel.
Radio Lecture – Lindsey Taylor: Stay Close to God, Safe in Love Leave a comment
Thanksgiving in Canberra Leave a comment
The hereness and nowness of harmony 1 comment
Outside the National Arts Centre in Ottawa stands a life-size statue of a man sitting at his grand piano. The man is Oscar Peterson, a Canadian and one of history’s greatest jazz pianists. He recorded prolifically during his 62-year career, and, as the son of immigrants from the Caribbean, broke many racial barriers when he toured the world, including the segregated southern United States in the 1950s and 60s.
As a part of the exhibit, a recording of Peterson’s music is playing at all times. This means that you can walk by that corner at 2:30 a.m. and hear his piano tinkling. Or, in the middle of a driving snowstorm at minus thirty degrees Celsius, his irresistible rhythms continue to delight.
For me, the statue, beyond reminding people of Peterson’s ongoing legacy, also communicates a spiritual truth: At all times, no matter what seems to be happening on the human scene, harmony is here. The harmony that I’m referring to is spiritual harmony from God, who supports His spiritual creation and forwards progress.
This ongoing spiritual reality of harmony supports us always, whether we are aware of it at this moment or not. The need, then, is to be mentally still enough to feel this supporting ever-presence and let it take us forward.
In demonstrating the reality of the presence of harmony, we should never fear. That’s easy to say, but in the midst of daily life’s almost constant challenges, how do we not fear? Innate to what we are as children of God is an intuitive spiritual sense that everything is actually all right and harmonious, no matter what appearances may be. It takes childlike trust in this spiritual sense as well as moral courage to not fear and to reject discord as having neither support nor legitimacy in us or our lives because of the ever-presence of all-harmonious Principle. As we cultivate that trust and moral courage, the conviction of the hereness and nowness of harmony grows, and we witness this kingdom of God demonstrated in healing and in the harmonization of situations.
Whatever our circumstances, we can feel this ever-operative law of harmony supporting us and taking us forward to bless and be blessed.
Enjoy reading the entire article by Lyle Young from the Christian Science Sentinel here https://sentinel.christianscience.com/shared/view/174avn0nvbo?s=e
Political negotiating through prayer 1 comment
Every day we need to make decisions. We need to make decisions about our schedules, our thoughts, and our actions. Coworkers, friends, family members, and some media sources freely offer opinions on how to think and act. But how do we find our way?
I’m discovering that there is a “higher” way—a more confident, inspired, joyous, humble, healthful, and fearless way to think, work, and act. It comes from following God alone. The book of Isaiah says: “My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts” (55:8, 9). Striving to follow this “higher” way is a blessing for us and for all mankind. And it’s ours for the asking, through heartfelt prayer and diligent demonstration of the good that is God.
Patrick McCreary’s article from the Christian Science Sentinel in which he tells how he was elected to city council and how he used this “higher” way in difficult negotiations can be read here
https://sentinel.christianscience.com/shared/view/vaxr8zsqgg?s=e
After he gives examples of wise directions he concludes:
“There is help in difficult times through a realization that we are not alone as we try to determine the wisest course of action. We are never governed by many ruling minds and powers but by the one infinite Mind, God—supremely intelligent, impartial, and ever active. In this Mind, we find wisdom and deliverance from confusion. We find peace instead of anxiety, as well as clarity, sanity, and maturity. And even in what seem to be very dark hours, we can rejoice, and experience and express gratitude.“
What does love have to do with ending a pandemic? Leave a comment
In the context of the current pandemic, I’ve been asking myself if it’s not only our love for God and a deeper appreciation of His love for us that hold the key to ridding the world of this disease, but also a more consistent commitment to love one another—that is, to be sure that our thoughts of others reflect God’s thought of us. Jesus said: “ ‘You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. A second is equally important: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself’ ” (Matthew 22:37–39, New Living Translation).
Of course, conventional wisdom would argue that it’s going to take a lot more than a group hug, no matter how heartfelt, to rid ourselves of something as challenging as a pandemic. I would agree. But conventional wisdom is also reluctant to recognize the mental nature of disease—to acknowledge the significance of Jesus’ practical demonstration and Mrs. Eddy’s explanation of that Christly love that strives to see only the goodness that God, good, sees. After all, if “unselfed love” heals disease, then it stands to reason that any opposite state of mind, such as fear, anger, hostility, and so on, would tend to precipitate disease—or rather, present itself physically as disease, as Christian Science teaches. Conventional wisdom also refuses outright to admit the all-power of God, divine Love, to heal disease.
What’s required of us, then, is to not only acknowledge Love’s allness as the ultimate antidote to disease but also to see others and ourselves as Love’s essential expression, naturally and inevitably inclined to love. As it says in the Bible, “We love because [God] first loved us” (I John 4:19, New Revised Standard Version).
This doesn’t mean that loving others is always easy. For instance, there are times when we find ourselves falling for the devilish lie that someone or some circumstance—our neighbors, our coworkers, our politicians, a pandemic—has somehow managed to deprive us of God’s goodness; that there’s some legitimate reason for our being unable to express all that God has given us to express, to enjoy all that He has given us to enjoy. When this happens, we face a crucial choice between accepting or rejecting the notion of a power opposed to God.
Ironically, it’s at moments like this that we are perhaps most receptive to Truth, a synonym for God that Mary Baker Eddy in her writings often couples with Christ. It’s this ever-present Christ, “the true idea voicing good, the divine message from God to men speaking to the human consciousness,” as Science and Health describes it (p. 332), that reveals God, divine Love, as the only true power. We especially need to know this in regard to the powerlessness of hatred, a state of thought that Mrs. Eddy associates with the virulent nature of contagious disease. Her Miscellaneous Writings 1883–1896 emphatically states, “… Hate no one; for hatred is a plague-spot that spreads its virus and kills at last. If indulged, it masters us; brings suffering upon suffering to its possessor, throughout time and beyond the grave” (p. 12).
Whether we feel a temptation to hate other people or are seeing hatred in others, this claim of a power apart from God needs to be met head on……
The conviction of God’s love for us is often what motivates our love for one another. And on the flip side, it’s our love for one another that opens the door more widely to feeling God’s love for us. This ceaseless cycle of Love—“Love is reflected in love,” as Mrs. Eddy puts it (Science and Health, p. 17)—inevitably lessens fear, dissolves hatred, and enables us to do our part in bringing an end to this pandemic.
Eric D. Nelson also shares a personal healing in this article from the Christian Science Sentinel which you can read or listen to in its entirety when you click here: https://sentinel.christianscience.com/shared/view/pe971zapv8?s=e
A NEW VIEW OF GOD AND ITS EFFECTS ON WELL-BEING Leave a comment
You are warmly invited to an ONLINE WEB LECTURE
by Phillip Hockley CS
sponsored by First Church of Christ, Scientist, Waverley
“Divine Love erases from our lives both the fear of disease and the effects of isolation as naturally as sunrise banishes night”
Click on this link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nu4G_MbAlnY&feature=youtu.be
Begin with the solution Leave a comment
Sharing how she was in limbo waiting for a visa application with no hope of getting on her flight, Larissa shares: ” I turned away from the fixing-planning-doing mentality that urgently wanted to outline a Plan B. Instead, I focused wholly on feeling the power of the divine presence.
This was not to avoid a problem or to escape from dealing with it. Christian Science shows that it is the nature of God, divine Mind or intelligence, to enlighten us with spiritual good. Even before a solution arises, a situation resolves, or a difficulty ends, this spiritual good calms and strengthens us, and opens our thought to possibilities.
Praying this way—to know and feel spiritual good—removes anxiety and brings an awareness of divine power and presence. And yet, there often is a tension between the human desire to control, fix, and problem-solve and a willingness to yield to the power of divine goodness and Love already governing. Feeling this divine goodness is a natural result of understanding God as infinite, divine Mind. Then the human mind—our limited thinking—drops all the striving for what doesn’t satisfy and exchanges flawed, human concepts for the divine consciousness of what is real and enduring. Moments of prayer enable us to yield to the awareness of divine Mind as the one divine consciousness, and to become willing to let events unfold in front of us.
The textbook of Christian Science states it this way: “Christian Science presents unfoldment, not accretion; it manifests no material growth from molecule to mind, but an impartation of the divine Mind to man and the universe” (Mary Baker Eddy, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 68). …..Scientific prayer begins with the solution—our oneness with God—and reasons out from there to see more of this reality in our experience. By removing fear, anxiety, doubt, ignorance, or pride, this prayer uncovers what’s already, and always, there, in divine consciousness. Our true being is always at one with this divine consciousness. And prayer helps us work out this spiritual conclusion in daily life.
Read about the perfect solution in this article by Larissa Snorek from the Christian Science Journal here
Undisturbed after a break-in Leave a comment
“We are undisturbed.” These were the words of assurance I spoke to my neighbours. My husband and I had just arrived home from a trip to see our house in a shambles after a break-in.
In times of trouble, I’ve also found something that Christ Jesus said in the Gospel of John to be very helpful. We read that he calls the devil, evil, “a liar, and the father of it” (8:44). This puts “error”—the mistaken assumption that another power besides God is in control—immediately behind us and enables us to go forward while listening to what the Christ is saying. ….
I then realized that it was very important not to give in to the temptation to sit in our house that evening feeling anxious that something else might happen, because, as the Bible instructs in Psalm 62, “My soul, wait thou only upon God; for my expectation is from him” (verse 5). God’s all-power meant that there had been no actual disturbance in the harmony of His ever-present government. ….
Above all, I felt that our home had never actually been broken into at all, because our true home is the inviolable consciousness of divine Love.
