The members of the Christian Science community in Canberra share their experiences and thoughts on Christian Science:
I’m grateful to Mrs Eddy for the Christian Science Journal and Christian Science Sentinel. I subscribe to these periodicals and treasure them for the way people share their thoughts, prayers, healings and experiences about many issues.
An article in a recent Sentinel reminded me that we’re not praying to change or improve God’s already perfect and harmonious creation. We’re praying to acknowledge, understand and claim this fact now and forever. Another article showed me how the writer uses the Lord’s Prayer to do this when praying about the concept of home in what seems to be a time of chronic homelessness all over the world.
He finds that this healing prayer establishes God’s kingdom as ever present. It establishes us as one universal family in our perfect Father-Mother’s harmonious kingdom where God provides for us exactly what we need.
A testimony in another recent Sentinel helped me in thinking about feelings and memories I sometimes have about the actions and behaviour of people in the past.
The writer had become irritated and impatient by the actions of a friend. When praying it occurred to her that this friend might be struggling in some way and need tenderness and support. Frustration was replaced with humility as she repented for her lack of compassion and her heart was filled with sweet love for her friend.
The writer refers to a gentle message that she found especially encouraging – from the third verse of hymn 278 in the Christian Science Hymnal.
Healed is thy hardness, His love hath dissolved it,
Full is the promise, the blessing how kind;
So shall His tenderness teach thee compassion,
So all the merciful, mercy shall find.
I realised that this is how I should be thinking and praying, rather than mulling over what I think are past hurts and injustices.
An article by Lindsey Biggs from the Christian Science Monitor.
Where does our worth come from? A particular job? How much praise we get from a job well done? Many of us have had to wrestle with such questions.
Lindsey writes:
There was a point when I desired additional employment. I felt there were greater ways that my skill set could be used than in what my role at the time offered.
I regularly turn to prayer when I need help or guidance. Prayer gives me a clearer sense of my (and everyone’s) relation to God. I’ve found that getting a clearer view of what God sees and knows helps me experience more harmony.
In this instance, my prayers led me to write a “spiritual resume” – not to share with prospective employers, but to help me think more deeply about where our true worth lies. What I mean by this is I compiled a list of spiritual qualities I felt I expressed, such as patience, creativity, compassion, timeliness, order, self-discipline, etc.
Click here to read, or listen to, this short article where Lindsey explains how a change of thinking from a material to a spiritual basis brought about long-term, satisfying employment.
In Canberra the lengthy COVID restrictions are now being eased. Thank goodness! As we approach re-opening and a more normal way of living and interacting, it’s important that we make sure all we’ve been through in the last 18 months has not been in vain.
We can think of these months of social isolation in two ways – as an awful time that was so hard, so lonely and often scary, or, as a unique opportunity. Could anything else have given us the opportunity to stop the busyness of everyday life, be still, and re-evaluate how we’ve been living in this world and treating one another? That initial decision as to how we’re going to think about this time, is immensely important because it dictates the failure or success of our experience ahead.
The repercussions of the initial decisions we make was brought home to me in a very dramatic way. My husband and I and our two young girls were holidaying, staying in a country motel. It was the very darkest time of night, we were all deep asleep when the oldest girl, who normally slept very soundly, for no discernible reason, suddenly woke up. As we were settling her back down, we smelled smoke. My husband looked out and saw the bushes beside the building on fire. Being ex-army he jumped into action and began hosing down the flames, but then realised the underside of the building was also alight. That’s when he found the whole of the underneath of the motel, which was fully occupied, was also on fire, and the rooms were starting to fill with smoke. We roused everyone and soon the fire was being put out. When the police arrived, they said it was an act of deliberate arson and five minutes more the floors would have collapsed into the flames.
Fear was starting to govern everyone’s thinking as they realised that through the evil actions of others, they had all nearly been killed in their sleep. It was at that point I realised we had a decision to make. There was another way of looking at the situation. It was that, even in the middle of the night when we were all sleeping the most soundly, even then we were alerted, saved and kept unharmed, that even in that extreme situation evil could not win. It was that option that we voiced to the group, and when we did, the atmosphere tangibly changed. Feelings of fear and vulnerability were replaced with a deep sense of safety and protection. Too, instead of my daughter feeling frightened, she felt the exact opposite, she felt like a hero.
Afterwards when I was thinking about what had taken place, I realised that in the weeks leading up to that holiday, I had been doing a lot of praying. Praying to me is not a pleading to a far-off God for benevolence, but a deep, conscientious recognition of the divine goodness ever-present in our lives. Tuning our thought to all that is right and good and loving is a bit like practising our maths calculations – we get better at it and see more right results appear. To me that’s what God is, the Principle that makes life work right and brings out those good results.
As we now move forward into this new way of living, recognising the good we’ve all had the time to focus on and practice, can help us feel assured that good results lie ahead for us. Through this period, haven’t we all been diligently and selflessly caring for one another in being isolated and law-abiding? Haven’t we had the time to rethink how we value our families and community? Haven’t we all been re-evaluating how we can better care for our planet? The basis of this thinking is love, and the Bible defines God as Love. Thinking rightly and acting lovingly is like doing our maths correctly, it assures us of good outcomes. It gives us the assurance that our futures will work out rightly.
This way of thinking about God, life and ourselves is Christianly scientific. If you’d like to look into this powerful healing way of thinking then visit the beautiful official website christianscience.com.
This recording is of readings on the topic: Love One Another
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Be kindly affectioned one to another with brotherly love. If it be possible, as much as lieth in you, live peaceably with all men. Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good.
(The Bible – Romans 12: 10, 18, 21)
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Every Wednesday at 6.15pm a Testimony Meeting is held at the Christian Science church in Canberra (corner of Macquarie and Bligh Streets, Barton). At these meetings short readings on a particular topic are followed by time for members of the congregation to share how they have been helped and healed through prayer.
Everyone is welcome. If you are in Canberra on any Wednesday, please join us.
Unselfish ambition, noble life-motives, and purity, – these constituents of thought, mingling, constitute individually and collectively true happiness, strength, and permanence.
The members of the Christian Science community in Canberra share their experiences and thoughts on Christian Science:
A few years ago, my wife and I and our two daughters flew from Canberra to Cape Town in South Africa to spend Christmas with my family.
We set off from Canberra without any problems and landed somewhere in Australia – I forget where – to connect with our international flight to our next stop in Johannesburg. Wherever it was, we were delayed and very late taking off.
We arrived in Johannesburg very late – about midnight – and missed our connection to Cape Town, so the airline arranged for us to fly the following morning and put us up in an airport hotel for the night.
We collected our luggage and walked out of the airport terminus to wait for the shuttle bus to take us to the hotel feeling tired, hungry and harassed. When we arrived at the hotel and were in the queue to check in, I couldn’t find my small backpack with all our passports and travel documents and knew I’d left it at the airport terminus where we boarded the shuttle bus. My immediate feeling was despair because Johannesburg was known as a crime capital and I’d previously misplaced things there and never had them returned.
My wife and I follow the teachings of Christian Science, and when I told her what had happened, she immediately started to pray, as we are taught in Christian Science, to know that God’s presence is everywhere, so there is no room for anything else. We talked about God’s nature as only good, loving, honest and caring and as being the only qualities that everyone, everywhere could express. I began to feel a lot less fearful.
The shuttle bus was still bringing people to the hotel, so I boarded it, continuing to pray, and returned to the airport terminus pick-up point. I asked the people waiting there if they’d seen my bag and someone said they thought someone had taken it to the hotel.
When I got back to the hotel, there was my wife, with my bag, and the person who had found it. We thanked her and quietly thanked God for his tender, loving care.
I am very grateful for the way Christian Science teaches us that we can always pray to God in times of need.
Mary Baker Eddy writes in her book Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures (pp 12,13) “In divine Science, where prayers are mental, all may avail themselves of God as “a very present help in trouble.” Love is impartial and universal in its adaptation and bestowals. It is the open fount which cries, “Ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters.”
Christian Science Canberra 