To Give More...

        ...of the redeeming truths of Christ's Divine Science is the plan for this blog during the coming year, and indeed the great need of humanity.  For how else can anyone learn of their true being as God's spiritual offspring, made and held in His image?  What Christ Jesus knew and proved for us of God's laws and our divine right to be free from all that would enslave us is the only way out of the mesmeric belief of life in and of matter, with its attendant limitations/suffering/dead-end. And God be thanked, the teachings of Christian Science make this saving knowledge available to every last one of us.



                                            May 2015 be the most

                                                         spiritually enlightened,

                                                                         God-pleasing year

                                                                                       we've ever had.

                                                                                                         

                                                                       


     

No One Exempt From God's Commands

                                                     This warning


                                                                  forever

                                                                                   stands:





                                           If we do what Jesus says,


                                           We build on rock.


                                           If we don't,


                                          We're on eroding sands.


                                          To imagine ourselves

                                       
                                          Exempt from God's commands

                                       
                                          Is supreme folly.
                                       

                           

Deliverance From Mortal Minds' Curse

        I have pluralized "minds" because of where this blog post is going.  Recently we saw a program on drug addiction that caused me to think of the subject from the standpoint of Christian Science.  In it, several of the pitifully sad people battling what seemed to be hopeless addiction to various drugs all said essentially the same thing: their life had been cursed because of what a parent or in most cases, their parents did to them, or did not do for them. Try as they had, spending time in drug rehabilitation programs, they all had fallen back because of traumatic childhood memories they just couldn't get free from.

        Some things I've learned from my study of Christian Science can well lift up someone reading this, and awaken a desire to learn more of what this religion teaches about our God-given freedom as His children.

        Believing that we are born into matter is just as much an error as thinking we die out of it.  Both conditions are illusions.  If we adhere to the glorious truth given in Psalm 90, "Lord, thou hast been our dwelling place in all generations," can we at the same time regard ourselves as having begun x number of years ago as a vulnerable, albeit cute, little bundle of matter that other mortals have damaged beyond repair?

        As Mary Baker Eddy writes in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, "Divine Science rolls back the clouds of error with the light of Truth, and lifts the curtain on man as never born and never dying, but as coexistent with his creator."

        As one prays in Christian Science to heal emotional wounds and debilitating memories, it is imperative to view existence as it always has been---continuously harmonious because always in God, good.  Our heavenly Parent has never mis-treated us, has He?

        This further statement from Mrs. Eddy has been of solid help to many who were struggling to overcome toxic childhood memories.  "It is well to know, dear reader, that our material, mortal history is but the record of dreams, not of man's real existence, and the dream has no place in the Science of being. It is'as a tale that is told,' and 'as the shadow when it declineth.'  The heavenly intent of earth's shadows is to chasten the affections, to rebuke human consciousness and turn it gladly from a material, false sense of life and happiness, to spiritual joy and true estimate of being. Retrospection and Introspection.


        And finally, a poem from one of my books:

                                                           
                FREEDOM

To longing deep and universal --
"If I could just be free!" --
Is this fact divine and comforting
That all can come to see:
Man is and ever has been in
God--His perfect child, eternally.
For we are not the slaves of
Influences hereditary or environmental;
Not helpless before circumstances.
Never under mortal mind curse
For a year, a day. an hour.
These are truths Christ Jesus knew,
And they gave him wondrous healing power.
This Christly knowledge Science imparts--
Saving knowledge so glorious--
That we're not held back by fleshly starts
But are right now the way God made us.
Fortunate world that there is revealed
Crucial things that all can claim and see,
(Things God has always known)
That now and through all eternity
We are His loved child, His very own--
Immensely blessed and whole and free.



        

     

A Gift to Ourselves and to Suffering Humanity

                                                      (By John Robert Howell)



        Among the many somber events preceding Christ Jesus' crucifixion were the failure of the disciples, most notably Peter, to stay awake while with him at Gethsemane and Peter's denial shortly thereafter that he was a follower of Jesus, a particularly painful moment in light of his vehement denial that he would ever abandon the Master.  It is easy to "tsk tsk" these failings with perhaps a dash of smugness but we might ask ourselves "Would I really have acted more courageously?"  But then, a more basic question might be "Do I express enough real Christliness to have even been chosen as one of the twelve?"   For myself I'm pretty sure I know the regrettable answer.

        Not very Christmasy musings, I agree, but it isn't the birth of the infant Jesus which is of so much importance as it is the life of Christ Jesus.  Gift buying, wrapping and opening, tree decorating, carol singing (inspiring and beatiful as many of them are), gourmandising, and jolly festivities won't bring one noticeably closer to demonstrating the Truth, Life and Love Christ Jesus' works and words expressed.  While we are perhaps carving another turkey, ham, or goose this holiday season would it not also be wise to carve out some quiet time in our busy lives to contemplate the object lesson Peter offers and to be fervently thankful to God for His unspeakable gift to ourselves and to suffering humanity.

   

When the Going is Rough

        This is written for the student of Christian Science, should you be one who needs this right now--not to depress you but to lift you up.  Those of us who are all-out for this religion of ours do not always find the going easy.  How could we, given the magnitude of Mary Baker Eddy's discovery and its tremendous importance to mankind?

        I recall awhile back one of our dedicated workers saying, "Discouragement has at times had me down for the count, not sure I could get up and continue the fight."  The carnal mind's attempts to shut down our work for the Cause can leave us saying, amen to this.

       But you know what?  God came to the aid of this person, as He always does for you and me.  And speaking personally, I have been brought right out of opposition so intense it seemed I could not endure it, by the blessed plain-speaking of our Master. Jesus never promised his followers a picnic on sunny days with balmy breezes.  We have only to consider words like these to know better:

        "Blessed are ye when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake."
        "If the world hate you, ye know that it hated me before it hated you."
        "If ye were of the world, the world would love his own;but because ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you."
        "Remember the word that I said unto you, The servant is not greater than his lord.  If they have persecuted me, they will also persecute you;"

        So comforting, so bracing I always find.

        So take heart.  Those of us who have named the name of Christ in Christian Science, will always have the victory over error.  Always.



     


     

My Hope For This Blog

        My hope for this blog in the coming months is that readers far and wide will be blessed as never before.

       Just imagine someone sitting alone in a darkened room, fearful, ill, almost in despair of ever being free.  Then someone comes into that room and opens the blinds.  A shaft of light shines through.

        Any comforting statement from the Holy Bible, anything our blessed Master said, any divine truth from the writings of Mary Baker Eddy, can be and has been to countless many, that shaft of light.

        And one can just imagine the joy that person feels when he or she learns, why I don't have to go on like this.  I can change my unenlightened, material thinking and replace it with spiritual understanding, with the healing light of Christ, Truth.  I do not have to go on in bondage.  God be praised, I don't have to suffer anymore!

        It comforts me to realize that through the teachings of Christian Science, this is taking place somewhere in our world every day.

Dealing With Christmas Pressure

   
        While at a Christmas gathering of relatives one year, my sister-in-law mentioned that their phone system was acting up, and the technician who was repairing it said, "You've got a lot of chaos on the line."  To which, Joannie replied, "Our whole house is chaotic right now!"

        This does not need to happen to us, at Christmas or any other time of the year, not when we can turn to what Christ Jesus said:  "Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you:  not as the world giveth, give I unto you.  Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid."  The number of men and women in the world who would give almost anything they own to feel some of this peace in their lives, must be in the hundreds of thousands, if not millions.  Calmness in the midst of life's disturbances, when we aren't experiencing it, can seem more important than food or drink.

        If you and I want to experience the deep peace the Master promised us and so obviously felt himself, a logical way to begin would be to cultivate the same awareness Jesus had that God is all-powerful and constantly in charge of our lives.

       God knows you and me not as stressed-out material beings but as His spiritual reflection, in possession right now of His dominion and peace--the same peace that Jesus manifested and said was ours.  Christ is always at hand to change turmoil into harmony.

        Abiding tranquility carries a price tag.  Through consistent, heartfelt communing with God, we feel the peace of our unity with Him as His beloved child.  God--the all-directing, supremely governing, intelligence of man and the universe--is indeed in charge of everything that concerns us.