Beauty surrounds us

One crisp autumn evening near sunset, we were leaving a scenic national park after a lovely day of sight-seeing.  As the car wound through the darkening mountains, I couldn't help reflecting on the brilliant, flaming foliage we had seen on every side, now obscured by nightfall.

"If someone drove through these mountains now, he would be completely unaware of the beauties surrounding him," I thought.  Then it occurred to me how often because of darkened, material views of creation we are unaware of the limitless, spiritual good at hand.

Mary Baker Eddy writes in Science and Health with Key to the Scripture (p. 304): "It is ignorance and false belief, based on a material sense of things, which hide spiritual beauty and goodness."  Through a study of Christian Science many are gaining spiritual enlightenment that not only dispels darkness and fear but reveals the abundance of joy, peace, and dominion that are man's by reflection.

This Science teaches that man is the creation, the very expression, of God, Soul, and fully reflects the divine attributes of loveliness, wholeness, and satisfaction.  In the realm  of Soul, where man really dwells, all is continuously controlled by God's law of harmony and beauty.

Christ Jesus looked upon each individual as a child of God.  He beheld each one in his true spiritual light and loveliness.  Despite the mortal pictures of sin, sickness, and disfigurement often presented to him, our Master was able to differentiate between the erroneous, mortal concept of man and the genuine child of God.

Where unenlightened, mortal eyes could see only distortion and ugliness, Jesus beheld the spiritual perfection of the real man.  This Christly perception restored the sick and repentant sinner to their original wholeness and beauty.  This same spiritual perception, or understanding, is today available to any humble seeker for Truth, as many students of Christian Science are proving.

"Open thou mine eyes that I may behold wondrous things out of thy law" prayed the Psalmist (Psalm 119:18).  As we pray for increased spiritual discernment, desiring to see only God's perfect creation, we will find the heavenly light of spiritual understanding dispelling the darkness of material thinking.  Discord, disease, and unloveliness cannot long abide in the experience of one whose thought has been illumined by the light of Christ.

There are no human circmstances so hopelessly dark that the omnipotent glow of spiritual perception cannot penetrate.  Even as the first rays of morning sunlight reveal the loveliness of the material universe, so a glimpse of infinite Truth pierces material views and brings clearly into focus the glorious handiwork of our heavenly Father.