What can you do when someone you trusted stops cooperating with you?
Even the best-intentioned efforts to break through a roadblock may fail if we’re looking at ourselves and our neighbor as human beings at odds with each other. But we can find a way forward when we’re willing to ask, How does God see His children?
This week’s Bible lesson from the Christian Science Quarterly, titled “Adam and Fallen Man,” answers that question by presenting a spiritual view of man as created in the image and likeness of God. A citation from “Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures” by Mary Baker Eddy explains, “There is but one creator and one creation. This creation consists of the unfolding of spiritual ideas and their identities, which are embraced in the infinite Mind and forever reflected” (pp. 502-503).
Christian Science reveals man – each one of us – as not made of matter and as not being a flawed mortal personality. Rather, we express our Maker, divine Spirit, so we are spiritual, complete, and perfect, as God is. Because God is Love, we are loving. Because God is Principle, we have integrity. Because God is good, we have no element of evil. And because God is All, we lack nothing.
This God-centered perspective on man lifts our thought above any seeming discord. When we remember that we are all the offspring of the one God, who forever upholds and blesses each of us, we see it is impossible for anyone to fall from his perfect status as God’s beloved child.
Spiritualizing my view of my fellow man brought about a harmonious resolution when I found myself at an impasse with a tenant who was renting a condo I owned. He had given notice that he would be moving out in a few months as soon as his lease was up. I decided it was the right time to sell the condo.
Since the lease included a clause allowing potential buyers to view the property while the tenant was still living there, I asked a real estate agent to advertise it. But the tenant was uncooperative with the process, to the extent that my agent recommended that I take the condo off the market until the tenant had moved out.
I was reluctant to do this. I knew the prime selling season would be over by then, and it would be harder to sell the empty condo without making improvements – an expense I’d hoped to avoid. So I asked a Christian Science practitioner to pray with me about the situation.
In Mrs. Eddy’s writings, I studied passages about the spiritual nature of man, such as this one from Science and Health: “From Love and from the light and harmony which are the abode of Spirit, only reflections of good can come” (p. 280). This reassured me that, despite appearances, God was in charge of the situation and was being reflected by everyone involved.
One day I mentioned to the practitioner that the recession had left me broke, and selling the condo would help me recover financially – but only if I didn’t have to make costly improvements first. He reassured me, “God is your source of supply, and since God is unlimited good, you can never fall short.”
That’s when I realized that the problem I needed to address was not the tenant. A change was needed in my own thinking. I’d been seeing both of us as dependent on the condo to meet needs that were at odds with each other. But now it was clear that God was blessing and caring for each of us, so neither the tenant nor I could experience any lack. Nor could either of us express anything less than our true identity as the image and likeness of our divine Maker.
With this spiritual perspective, I felt free to take the condo off the market without fearing financial repercussions. After the tenant moved out, I happily had the condo repainted and recarpeted with no concern about the cost. Confident that divine Love was meeting every need, I could think unselfishly about preparing this home for its new owner.
The condo sold quickly, and although the sale price did not make up for the improvements I’d made, I didn’t fret. I trusted God to meet my financial need, and a few months later my employer gave me a generous pay raise that more than covered the additional costs. I could joyfully say with Psalms 40:4, “Blessed is that man that maketh the Lord his trust.”
Whatever dead end we seem to be facing, it is based on a limited, material perspective. Prayer resolves it by giving us an unlimited, God-centered perspective that reveals infinite Spirit as the source of all good, and man as having all that he needs.
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