Sometimes it can feel as if life is moving from event to event, moment to moment, some good, some bad. It might even seem that good and evil are a necessary balance for life to move forward – or that things are out of balance, and evil is overcoming the good.
But Christian Science reveals something different – a change in how we can view the world and our lives. Mary Baker Eddy writes in “Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures,” “When we realize that Life is Spirit, never in nor of matter, this understanding will expand into self-completeness, finding all in God, good, and needing no other consciousness” (p. 264). Here Life and Spirit are synonyms of God, universal good.
The subject of this week’s Bible lesson in the Christian Science Quarterly is “Life.” Included in the lesson is Psalm 23, which begins, “The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want” (verse 1). The psalm goes on to describe God’s care blessing us with abundance, peace among enemies, and even safe passage through the “valley of the shadow of death” – or release from the fear of death and its sting.
Mrs. Eddy writes: “Though the way is dark in mortal sense, divine Life and Love illumine it, destroy the unrest of mortal thought, the fear of death, and the supposed reality of error. Christian Science, contradicting sense, maketh the valley to bud and blossom as the rose” (Science and Health, p. 596).
Life and Love are that good Shepherd who cares for us all so beautifully and illumines the way, showing us that we need not fear. But we might not always feel aware of this loving ever-presence. How do we get there, to these “green pastures” described by the psalmist? This week’s Bible lesson gives us these words of God: “I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live” (Deuteronomy 30:19). We can choose to acknowledge that God is Life. I think of making that choice as letting my consciousness be governed by God.
I proved this one summer when I was home from college. I was having a problem with my eyes, and I could not see clearly. But I knew, because I had had many healings through Christian Science in the past, that my best prayer was to understand God better.
I sat at my desk studying the synonyms of God that are found throughout the Bible and Science and Health: Principle, Mind, Soul, Spirit, Life, Truth and Love. I was especially pondering God as Truth and Life – which include the truth of God’s ever-present action and the sanctity of life in God, untouchable by disease or death.
Just then my very big but still young dog twisted in his play on the landing outside my open door and fell 15 feet to the cement below. He didn’t move. As I ran down the stairs to be by him, my thought was that God provided his life, and it could not be taken away. Science and Health says: “Let neither fear nor doubt overshadow your clear sense and calm trust, that the recognition of life harmonious – as Life eternally is – can destroy any painful sense of, or belief in, that which Life is not” (p. 495).
You could say that I chose Life, God, rather than accident or inharmony. I knelt by my dog’s side for a bit, still focusing on God and the presence of Life. Then, suddenly, the dog jumped up and ran off to play. There was no whining, no limping, just Life expressed. He was completely unaffected by the fall. Not only had my prayers helped my dog, but the issue with my eyes was also soon healed.
God, divine Life, is eternally with us. And as we choose its blessings, we find we live in the abundance and safety of those green pastures.
If you’re new to the weekly Bible Lessons from the Christian Science Quarterly, you can view a free sample of a previous week’s Bible lesson here. Subscribers to the weekly Lesson can log in here.
