Whosoever believeth that wrath is righteous or that divinity is appeased by human suffering, does not understand God. (Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy p22:27)
God is Love. (Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy p2:23)
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To those leaning on the sustaining infinite, to-day is big with blessings.
(Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy pvii)
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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.
(Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy p264)
When asked how she was praying about the war in the Middle East Bethany Taylor responded by penning this letter to a young mother:
I was watching the news about Israel and Hamas. You came on talking about trying to keep your baby quiet so you wouldn’t be detected by the attackers and how your husband had been taken as a hostage. My heart went out to you, and in a sincere desire to help, I humbly reached out to God and asked how I could help, how I could pray right then. The answer came in the form of a hymn written by the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, Mary Baker Eddy.
I began singing and praying the words: “O gentle presence, peace and joy and power; / O Life divine, that owns each waiting hour” (Christian Science Hymnal, No. 207). I felt assured of God’s ever-present peace, joy, and omnipotent power right then and there for you and all who are feeling alone and afraid, even when in the midst of terror and war.
As a young mother, I was widowed and found myself raising my three-year-old son on my own. I leaned on God’s mothering and fathering my son and me, and I know we can confidently rely on that same love here and now. As a recent Sentinel Watch podcast put it, “Love hasn’t left this home” (Tony Lobl, “Love hasn’t left this home,” cssentinel.com, September 11, 2023).
Love hasn’t left Israel, or Gaza, or Ukraine, or any other area experiencing war and conflict. Even though I am just one individual in a country far removed from these places, I actively pray to know that God’s love is always present, dependable, steadfast, all-powerful. “Thou Love that guards the nestling’s faltering flight! / Keep Thou my child on upward wing tonight,” that hymn says. We are each God’s nestlings, whether struggling with a small problem or the horror of war. We can feel and reflect God’s mothering love here and now.
Another line in this hymn, which I have known and loved for decades, is “Love is our refuge; only with mine eye / Can I behold the snare, the pit, the fall.” But as long as I have been singing this hymn, this was the first time I understood that Mrs. Eddy was saying that we can stay conscious of the spiritual fact that divine Love, God, is our—and everyone’s—ever-present refuge. When, instead, we begin to examine the snares, pits, falls, or material circumstances, that is when we feel immobilized by fear, and illness, conflict, hatred, and evil seem so much larger than Love’s ability to handle them. But that isn’t so. As we learn in Christian Science, God is All-in-all.
“His habitation high is here, and nigh, / His arm encircles me, and mine, and all,” the hymn assures. And I am thinking, in quiet prayer, just how it embraces you and all the mothers in the region.
Love,
Bethany Taylor
This response to the war was originally published in the October 19, 2023 issue of the Christian Science Sentinel.
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The devotion of thought to an honest achievement makes the achievement possible.
(Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy p199: 21-22)
Right motives give pinions to thought, and strength and freedom to speech and action.
(Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy p454: 19-21)
My prayer, some daily good to do
To Thine, for Thee;
An offering pure of Love, whereto
God leadeth me.
This is the final verse of a poem by Mary Baker Eddy, Christ My Refuge, also included in the Christian Science Hymnal (254-257)
Wednesday Testimony Meeting Readings.
This recording is of the readings on the topic: Man – God Expressed
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And God said: “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.”- (The Bible – Genesis 1: 26)
… man is the reflection of God, or Mind, and therefore is eternal; that which has no separate mind from God; that which has not a single quality underived from Deity; that which possesses no life, intelligence, nor creative power of his own, but reflects spiritually all that belongs to his Maker. (Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy p475)
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.
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God is Love.
(The Bible – I John 4: 8)
Love inspires, illumines, designates, and leads the way.
(Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy p454: 18-19)
The magnitude of Jesus’ work, his material disappearance before their eyes and his reappearance, all enabled the disciples to understand what Jesus had said. Heretofore they had only believed; now they understood. The advent of this understanding is what is meant by the descent of the Holy Ghost, — that influx of divine Science which so illuminated the Pentecostal Day and is now repeating its ancient history.
Jesus’ last proof was the highest, the most convincing, the most profitable to his students. The malignity of brutal persecutors, the treason and suicide of his betrayer, were overruled by divine Love to the glorification of the man and of the true idea of God, which Jesus’ persecutors had mocked and tried to slay. The final demonstration of the truth which Jesus taught, and for which he was crucified, opened a new era for the world. Those who slew him to stay his influence perpetuated and extended it.
Jesus rose higher in demonstration because of the cup of bitterness he drank. Human law had condemned him, but he was demonstrating divine Science. Out of reach of the barbarity of his enemies, he was acting under spiritual law in defiance of matter and mortality, and that spiritual law sustained him. The divine must overcome the human at every point. The Science Jesus taught and lived must triumph over all material beliefs about life, substance, and intelligence, and the multitudinous errors growing from such beliefs.
Love must triumph over hate. Truth and Life must seal the victory over error and death, before the thorns can be laid aside for a crown, the benediction follow, “Well done, good and faithful servant,” and the supremacy of Spirit be demonstrated.
(Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy p43-44)
Christian Science Canberra 