Prayer Not Only For Ourselves

                                                 By John Robert Howell



        Challenges and afflictions come to us all.  But whatever our particular problems may be, it is sometimes tempting to limit our efforts to the demands of personal tribulations.  Obviously, our first responsibility is prayer for our own well-being, so that we may be helpful to others. But taking care that this deviation to self does not become self-indulgent, shutting out Christly compassion for our fellow beings, is essential.

        Everything we learn in Christian Science and certainly from the Bible stresses the importance of loving our neighbors--wherever in the world they happen to be.  And prayer on their behalf never fails to bless.  As the New Testament points out:  "The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much."  (Jas 5:16)

        Failing to pray for the mitigation of humanity's overwhelming needs, we default to some extent our duty as students of Christian Science to pray more comprehensively for our own.  Ignoring the countless evils besetting humanity is to fail to wrestle with and overcome some of the false beliefs which tempt us all, and which originate in the basic lie of mortal mind and to invite unwittingly the unclean spirit Jesus speaks of to take "seven other spirits more wicked than  himself, and enter in and dwell there [in our consciousness]:  and the last state of that man is worse than the first."  (Matt 12:45)

        To human sense the dismaying quantity, depth, and ferocity of the evil, depravity, and cruelty in the world is inescapable, but we cannot afford to ignore our duty to defend ourselves from aggressive mental suggestion and to refuse to "stand aghast at nothingness."  (Mary Baker Eddy)  As we heal in our thinking--the only place it ever "exists"--the world's aggressively mesmeric claims, we cannot fail to some extent, to heal ourselves.  Turning our back on suffering humanity or foolishly hoping the bad out there isn't as bad as we don't want to know gives to Satan the only "life" and influence he can ever have.