Just as any supportive wife would do, I'd like to recommend to my readers a
website just begun--one that should be enlightening and uplifting to viewers.
(Am I a wee bit prejudiced here? Of course!)
It will be written by John R. Howell, and given the scholarly and conscientious
attention he gives to whatever he writes, I feel it will be worth checking
out. Though this is done with his fellow Christian Scientists in mind, it should
prove of interest to any serious student of the King James Bible -- the Word of
God made available to mankind in majesty and beauty never equaled, in my
opinion.
You may access it this way:
http://biblenoteskjvcs.wordpress.com/
Or Google "biblenoteskjvcs" and you've got it.
Tuesday, August 16, 2011
Friday, August 12, 2011
The Limelight's for Christ
It's been my privilege to know a few rare individuals whose lives just glow, whose devotion to God bless others far and wide. I used to wonder, what is it that this person has that attracts so? It isn't what they say or do so much, as something almost intangible. Why do they inspire such love in others they interact with? Then it became clear: why on the throne of their lives, so to speak, is not petty self but Christ. It is their humility, which draws others in.
There's no mistaking when we come across someone who has love for Christ in their hearts. It is as Jesus said, a city set on a hill that cannot be hid. It's as though, whether and probably through hard experience in life, they have settled this question once and for all: whose glory am I living for? my own or for His?
And obviously early on, they've come to grips with what Paul points out in these words: "Do I seek to please men? for if I yet pleased men, I should not be the servant of Christ". (Galatians 1:10)
To cater to others in order to fulfill personal ambitions, to gain preferment over others, is not why they are doing what they do. And worse still, they wouldn't dream of pushing Christ out of the limelight so that they may bask in it!
We each have two mental roads that confront us in this life -- the broad one leading to self, worldly honour, and destruction sure, and the narrow one that paradoxically leads to self-renunciation, expanding horizons -- real happiness. Thank God there have been given to us such sublime examples of those who chose the Master's path, whose lives are shedding light upon the rest of us.
There's no mistaking when we come across someone who has love for Christ in their hearts. It is as Jesus said, a city set on a hill that cannot be hid. It's as though, whether and probably through hard experience in life, they have settled this question once and for all: whose glory am I living for? my own or for His?
And obviously early on, they've come to grips with what Paul points out in these words: "Do I seek to please men? for if I yet pleased men, I should not be the servant of Christ". (Galatians 1:10)
To cater to others in order to fulfill personal ambitions, to gain preferment over others, is not why they are doing what they do. And worse still, they wouldn't dream of pushing Christ out of the limelight so that they may bask in it!
We each have two mental roads that confront us in this life -- the broad one leading to self, worldly honour, and destruction sure, and the narrow one that paradoxically leads to self-renunciation, expanding horizons -- real happiness. Thank God there have been given to us such sublime examples of those who chose the Master's path, whose lives are shedding light upon the rest of us.
Wednesday, August 10, 2011
For someone looking for work
Being that people read my blog posts who are not adherents of my religion, thought these thoughts on someone who's out of a job and looking might be helpful.
Just yesterday as I was driving along, heard a reporter interviewing a lady in the London area about the rioting going on there. She said it was a lack of jobs for the young people fueling the unrest, that her own son went out every day to find a job and could not. There are opposite views of the cause of all this, some saying it's mere hooliganism. But it did start me thinking about those who need work and can't find any.
And closer to home, we have a friend who feels desperate about being unemployed. He's sent out hundreds of resumes, gone to other states for multiple interviews, and still no offers. Don is a self-sufficient individual, and feels too proud to ask God for help.
And this reluctance to seek divine help when we need it led me to think of something. We were at some neighbors' house recently. They have the cutest little girl, and she happened to be building a castle with wooden blocks. She stopped, however, when the pieces wouldn't fit, and without a moment's hesitation said, "Help me,Daddy". This brought her father's immediate help.
As I observed this simple display of childlike confidence, I thought, "If adults would only turn as wholeheartedly to their heavenly Father, how much more easily would complex, challening problems be resolved!"
Each of us, regardless of circumstances or problems we face, can turn immediately to God, divine Love, our ever-present help. Christ Jesus taught this. He said, "If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Father which is in heaven give good things to them that ask him?" (Matthew 7:11)
In Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, writes, "Divine Love always has met and always will meet every human need." (page 494) God is a tender, loving Father, One we can turn to for help with any problem -- and this covers unemployment as well. In fact, we can turn to Him nonstop, and still not exhaust His tenderly patient, unlimited care. It's so right to seek God's help. As Jesus counseled, "Ask, and it shall be given you." (Matthew 7:7)
How should we turn to Him? With half hopes that He will favor our request? Or should we approach Him with the prayer of heartfelt understanding -- that is, with a knowledge of and respect for His eternal laws? When one is equipped with what Christian Science reveals of God and man, seeking out God's solution to a problem is no hit-or-miss proposition.
Let me repeat, Christian Science shows one not only how to ask God to deliver him but how to do so in confident expectation of answers. Its teachings which are in accord with the inspired message of the Bible, reveal the Christianly scientific prayer that Jesus practiced so successfully.
Before our great Master raised his friend, Lazarus, from the grave, he spoke this prayer of spiritual affirmation: "Father, I thank thee that thou hast heard me. And I knew that thou hearest me always." (John ll:41, 42) The human picture portrayed hopelessness and grief. Yet Jesus thanked God for being all-powerful and ever present! This may have seemed startling. Jesus didn't turn to God in mere optimism, just hoping He would hear; he knew He would. His understanding of man's unity with God, divine Love, gave him absolute assurance that God answers every call.
Christian Science makes available to any seeker the understanding Christ Jesus had that man is actually the child, the spiritual reflection, of God, divine Love. This realization will help any man or woman to turn radically away from the discouraging human picture of inactivity or frustration. It will encourage him or her to accept the spiritual fact that God, divine Mind, is ever active, and that man, His image, must also be continuously and happily engaged in meaningful, worthwhile activity.
And do you know, opportunity can never really be absent. As the Bible assures us: "God is able to make all grace abound toward you; that ye, always having all sufficiency in all things, may abound to every good work." (II Corinthians 9:8)
As we confidently claim our God-given right to satisfying purpose, joy, and achievement, you and I will find more and more occasions for being about our real business. And what is this business? Reflecting God, good. Because God has created His child as His own perfect expression, no matter how despairing or desolate any circumstance may seem, it can be turned completely around, and we can be restored to our normal state of activity, joy, and purpose.
Finding out who we really are, beginning to grasp the glorious fact that in our true, spiritual being we are now the beloved, constantly cared-for expression of our heavenly Father, gives us the confidence and intiative we need to express more of good, more of God, in everything we do. This is where successful activity lies.
Nothing brings opportunity to our door quicker than the desire to be useful to God and to our fellowmen. We don't even have to take a very long look about us today to see how desperately needed our efforts are. Endless opportunities abound! As we recognize and take advantage of the means God is continously providing us to show love to our fellow beings, we will not only be making a difference in this world; we'll find ourselves continuously employed in satisfying work that human conditions cannot touch.
Just yesterday as I was driving along, heard a reporter interviewing a lady in the London area about the rioting going on there. She said it was a lack of jobs for the young people fueling the unrest, that her own son went out every day to find a job and could not. There are opposite views of the cause of all this, some saying it's mere hooliganism. But it did start me thinking about those who need work and can't find any.
And closer to home, we have a friend who feels desperate about being unemployed. He's sent out hundreds of resumes, gone to other states for multiple interviews, and still no offers. Don is a self-sufficient individual, and feels too proud to ask God for help.
And this reluctance to seek divine help when we need it led me to think of something. We were at some neighbors' house recently. They have the cutest little girl, and she happened to be building a castle with wooden blocks. She stopped, however, when the pieces wouldn't fit, and without a moment's hesitation said, "Help me,Daddy". This brought her father's immediate help.
As I observed this simple display of childlike confidence, I thought, "If adults would only turn as wholeheartedly to their heavenly Father, how much more easily would complex, challening problems be resolved!"
Each of us, regardless of circumstances or problems we face, can turn immediately to God, divine Love, our ever-present help. Christ Jesus taught this. He said, "If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Father which is in heaven give good things to them that ask him?" (Matthew 7:11)
In Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, writes, "Divine Love always has met and always will meet every human need." (page 494) God is a tender, loving Father, One we can turn to for help with any problem -- and this covers unemployment as well. In fact, we can turn to Him nonstop, and still not exhaust His tenderly patient, unlimited care. It's so right to seek God's help. As Jesus counseled, "Ask, and it shall be given you." (Matthew 7:7)
How should we turn to Him? With half hopes that He will favor our request? Or should we approach Him with the prayer of heartfelt understanding -- that is, with a knowledge of and respect for His eternal laws? When one is equipped with what Christian Science reveals of God and man, seeking out God's solution to a problem is no hit-or-miss proposition.
Let me repeat, Christian Science shows one not only how to ask God to deliver him but how to do so in confident expectation of answers. Its teachings which are in accord with the inspired message of the Bible, reveal the Christianly scientific prayer that Jesus practiced so successfully.
Before our great Master raised his friend, Lazarus, from the grave, he spoke this prayer of spiritual affirmation: "Father, I thank thee that thou hast heard me. And I knew that thou hearest me always." (John ll:41, 42) The human picture portrayed hopelessness and grief. Yet Jesus thanked God for being all-powerful and ever present! This may have seemed startling. Jesus didn't turn to God in mere optimism, just hoping He would hear; he knew He would. His understanding of man's unity with God, divine Love, gave him absolute assurance that God answers every call.
Christian Science makes available to any seeker the understanding Christ Jesus had that man is actually the child, the spiritual reflection, of God, divine Love. This realization will help any man or woman to turn radically away from the discouraging human picture of inactivity or frustration. It will encourage him or her to accept the spiritual fact that God, divine Mind, is ever active, and that man, His image, must also be continuously and happily engaged in meaningful, worthwhile activity.
And do you know, opportunity can never really be absent. As the Bible assures us: "God is able to make all grace abound toward you; that ye, always having all sufficiency in all things, may abound to every good work." (II Corinthians 9:8)
As we confidently claim our God-given right to satisfying purpose, joy, and achievement, you and I will find more and more occasions for being about our real business. And what is this business? Reflecting God, good. Because God has created His child as His own perfect expression, no matter how despairing or desolate any circumstance may seem, it can be turned completely around, and we can be restored to our normal state of activity, joy, and purpose.
Finding out who we really are, beginning to grasp the glorious fact that in our true, spiritual being we are now the beloved, constantly cared-for expression of our heavenly Father, gives us the confidence and intiative we need to express more of good, more of God, in everything we do. This is where successful activity lies.
Nothing brings opportunity to our door quicker than the desire to be useful to God and to our fellowmen. We don't even have to take a very long look about us today to see how desperately needed our efforts are. Endless opportunities abound! As we recognize and take advantage of the means God is continously providing us to show love to our fellow beings, we will not only be making a difference in this world; we'll find ourselves continuously employed in satisfying work that human conditions cannot touch.
Thursday, August 4, 2011
"Got Jesus?"...
...read the tee shirt
on someone at the mall,
something one sees
every now and then
here in Tennessee.
But what if displaying
our love for Christ
on our apparel is
not what we want to do?
How can the world tell
that we are to Jesus true?
Fortunately, our Master
gives us this gold standard:
"By this shall all men know
that ye are my disciples,
if ye have love one for another."
(John 13:35)
No, we're not called upon
to walk barefoot on hot coals
to show our devotion,
nor wear it on our clothes,
to show we love Him best.
Something simpler, yet
more difficult is the test...
showing love for others.
How easy to read about--
how much less so to act out.
Is it this way for everyone?
Not for me to say, or judge.
But there are commands
one just cannot fudge.
Then if loving more is
what it's got to be,
may you and I do so --
enthusiastically.
on someone at the mall,
something one sees
every now and then
here in Tennessee.
But what if displaying
our love for Christ
on our apparel is
not what we want to do?
How can the world tell
that we are to Jesus true?
Fortunately, our Master
gives us this gold standard:
"By this shall all men know
that ye are my disciples,
if ye have love one for another."
(John 13:35)
No, we're not called upon
to walk barefoot on hot coals
to show our devotion,
nor wear it on our clothes,
to show we love Him best.
Something simpler, yet
more difficult is the test...
showing love for others.
How easy to read about--
how much less so to act out.
Is it this way for everyone?
Not for me to say, or judge.
But there are commands
one just cannot fudge.
Then if loving more is
what it's got to be,
may you and I do so --
enthusiastically.
Some Beautiful Words on Humility
The first is something the Discoverer and Founder of my religion, Mary Baker Eddy, wrote. It's from her book, Retrospection and Introspection (pages 91 and 92) where she is speaking of Jesus:
"What has this hillside priest, this seaside teacher, done for the human race? Ask, rather, what has he not done. His holy humility, unworldliness, and self-abandonment wrought infinite results. The method of his religion was not too simple to be sublime, nor was his power so exalted as to be unavailable for the needs of suffering mortals, whose wounds he healed by Truth and Love."
"May we unloose the latchets of his Christliness, inherit his legacy of love, and reach the fruition of his promise: 'If ye abide in me, and my words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you.'"
And from a sermon Albert Schweitzer preached in 1905:
"To content oneself with becoming small: that is the only salvation and liberation. To work in the world as such, asking nothing of it, or of men, not even recognition, that is true happiness. There are things which one cannot do without Jesus. Without Him one cannot attain to that higher innocence -- unless we look to Him in the disappointments of life, and seek in Him the strength to be childlike and small in that higher sense. Whoever has gone through the world of smallness has left the empire of this world to enter into the kingdom of God. He has gone over the border as one goes over the border in a dark forest -- without taking note of it. The way remains the same, the surrounding things the same, and only gradually does he realize that whilst everything is familiar, it is different, that life is the same and yet not the same because of the clarity which lights up in him, and because of the peace and strength which have taken possession of him because he is small and has finished with himself.
L'humilite est la gloire de toutes les vertues."
"What has this hillside priest, this seaside teacher, done for the human race? Ask, rather, what has he not done. His holy humility, unworldliness, and self-abandonment wrought infinite results. The method of his religion was not too simple to be sublime, nor was his power so exalted as to be unavailable for the needs of suffering mortals, whose wounds he healed by Truth and Love."
"May we unloose the latchets of his Christliness, inherit his legacy of love, and reach the fruition of his promise: 'If ye abide in me, and my words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you.'"
And from a sermon Albert Schweitzer preached in 1905:
"To content oneself with becoming small: that is the only salvation and liberation. To work in the world as such, asking nothing of it, or of men, not even recognition, that is true happiness. There are things which one cannot do without Jesus. Without Him one cannot attain to that higher innocence -- unless we look to Him in the disappointments of life, and seek in Him the strength to be childlike and small in that higher sense. Whoever has gone through the world of smallness has left the empire of this world to enter into the kingdom of God. He has gone over the border as one goes over the border in a dark forest -- without taking note of it. The way remains the same, the surrounding things the same, and only gradually does he realize that whilst everything is familiar, it is different, that life is the same and yet not the same because of the clarity which lights up in him, and because of the peace and strength which have taken possession of him because he is small and has finished with himself.
L'humilite est la gloire de toutes les vertues."
Tuesday, August 2, 2011
Second to None
It is a holy day
when this becomes clear:
we aren't going to be
the smartest, the richest,
or the best-looking one around
but this one great thing
we all of us can do:
worship and serve that One
Who is second to none...
work to become second to none
when it comes to acknowledging
Him who gives us life
and breath and all things.
With Christ's example in full view --
such a faithful Son! --
there's no higher goal,
nothing with more bliss in it,
than making this our lifetime work...
to love and praise our God,
as Jesus did -- wholeheartedly.
So when it comes to adoring You,
dear loving Father,
I intend to be second to none.
Even now, You hear me say:
"You may have a daughter somewhere
who thanks You more than I do."
"But I doubt it,"
I always tell Him.
when this becomes clear:
we aren't going to be
the smartest, the richest,
or the best-looking one around
but this one great thing
we all of us can do:
worship and serve that One
Who is second to none...
work to become second to none
when it comes to acknowledging
Him who gives us life
and breath and all things.
With Christ's example in full view --
such a faithful Son! --
there's no higher goal,
nothing with more bliss in it,
than making this our lifetime work...
to love and praise our God,
as Jesus did -- wholeheartedly.
So when it comes to adoring You,
dear loving Father,
I intend to be second to none.
Even now, You hear me say:
"You may have a daughter somewhere
who thanks You more than I do."
"But I doubt it,"
I always tell Him.
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