People calling themselves influencers seem to proliferate on social media nowadays. A quick Google search revealed that they are often people who have come to prominence because of their particular skills. Some were wildlife ‘warriors’, some were sports people, some musicians, and some seemed to be famous just for being famous. There were many!
This started me thinking about what it means to be an influencer. Are we not all influencers in some respect? When my son was in primary school, each year he was seated next to classmates who found listening to instructions and staying on task difficult. The idea was that my son, who was a steady and capable worker, would be a good influence on his desk-mate. I asked him if he minded this. He said that if he could help someone else achieve more or be more successful, then he was happy to do this.
When I thought more about this, I realised that all of us are exerting an influence in some form. I ask myself: Am I, like my son, accepting that the way I handle life can be an influence for good?
In our day-to-day lives dealing with routine tasks at work, in the family or the community our actions are not neutral. We are always contributing to the mental atmosphere for better or for worse. The way we handle situations that seem not to go smoothly can have a big impact on those around us. Our response when we think someone has acted thoughtlessly, or has inconvenienced us, influences the mental atmosphere. If we meet each of these situations with grace, compassion, forgiveness, generosity then we have been an influencer for good.
Mary Baker Eddy, the founder of Christian Science writes: Your influence for good depends upon the weight you throw into the right scale. The good you do and embody gives you the only power obtainable. (p192 Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures). This is an hourly – even a moment by moment – demand on each of us. This is how we too can be real influencers for good.
Contributed by a member of the Canberra Christian Science community.
The girl on my Instagram story was eating a special brand of crackers, and I was intrigued—not so much by the crackers, but by her toned physique and apparently charmed existence. On my next trip to the grocery store, I got a box of these crackers for myself. And when I ripped open the package to try them, I had to admit they were good … but they didn’t give me the girl’s “perfect” life.
Because really, on some level, that’s why I’d bought the crackers: I wanted to believe that following in that girl’s footsteps might get me just a little more of what she had—and what I didn’t. Of course, I knew rationally that eating the same food as some girl on social media wasn’t going to give me the life I was imagining. Yet … Click here to continue reading, or to listen to, this article.
This testimony was published in the July 15 issue of the Christian Science Sentinel. It is by a student who Zooms in each week to the Christian Science Sunday School in Canberra.
A few years ago, I heard something disturbing on the radio here in Singapore, where I live. Someone shared a scary experience they had been through, and the details frightened me. I didn’t know what to think. I was feeling overwhelmed by thoughts about what I’d heard, and my happiness started to fade. These feelings even affected my schoolwork. I decided to pray because I knew prayer could help me.
I started thinking about where my happiness comes from. (Click here to continue reading or to listen to this testimony.)
Spiritual living and blessedness are the only evidences, by which we can recognize true existence and feel the unspeakable peace which comes from an all-absorbing spiritual love.
This recording is of the readings on the topic: Laws That Bring Peace.
“Thou shalt have no other gods before me.” (Exodus xx. 3.) … One infinite God, good, unifies men and nations; constitutes the brotherhood of man; ends wars; fulfils the Scripture, “Love thy neighbor as thyself;” annihilates pagan and Christian idolatry, — whatever is wrong in social, civil, criminal, political, and religious codes; equalizes the sexes; annuls the curse on man, and leaves nothing that can sin, suffer, be punished or destroyed.
Christian Science Canberra 