I once received news that my parked car had been hit by a large vehicle. It was a hit-and-run. But a man who witnessed the incident ran after the driver on foot. He caught up with them at a stop sign and said they needed to turn around. When the driver took off, all hope seemed lost – but in what seemed like a miracle, the driver turned back around to later meet me in the parking lot and assess the damage.
A police report was filed, insurance cards were exchanged, and the deep dent in my car was eventually fixed some weeks later. But I couldn’t get over the fact that a stranger had run after the driver!
“If that was my car, I would have wanted someone to do the same for me,” he explained. I don’t know this individual’s religious background, but I certainly appreciated that he went to such lengths to practice the Golden Rule to treat others the way we’d like to be treated, which is one of the rules for living that Jesus preached. I was in awe and truly touched that someone would go out of their way like that.
And even the person who had made the mistake – the fact that this driver had ultimately turned around to make it right seemed amazing to me. I thanked them both in the end for helping me work out the details of the situation.
It seemed clear that something had impelled them both to do the right thing, that the grace and goodwill each had expressed was a result of their listening to something innate to them.
Christian Science refers to that force that moves us to good as “Christ.” The Bible talks about Christ as bringing “on earth peace, good will toward men” (Luke 2:14) – giving grace to humanity. The discoverer of Christian Science, Mary Baker Eddy, writes, “Christ is the true idea voicing good, the divine message from God to men speaking to the human consciousness” (“Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures,” p. 332).
Why would following Christ be innate to someone? The Bible talks about man – a term that includes all of us – coming from God, who is good. If we come from good, then all that comes with that goodness – goodwill, love, peace, etc. – makes us what we really are as God’s spiritual offspring. Christ communicates this truth to us. We are inherently able to hear these inspired messages of good because God is right here with us, just as Jesus said.
Many of these ideas are shared in the Bible Lesson published in the Christian Science Quarterly. The subject of this week’s lesson comes in the form of a question: “Is the Universe, Including Man, Evolved by Atomic Force?” It begins with citations from the Bible that show that God has made us spiritually and that God-given spiritual gifts, or qualities, are native to us.
What spoke to me most deeply from this week’s lesson was this quote, which refers to God as divine Love: “The miracle of grace is no miracle to Love” (Science and Health, p. 494). Because God is Love and we are children of that Love, qualities like grace and goodwill are part of us. So what may seem like a miracle is actually divinely natural.
Christ is a powerful force, inspiring us to do the will of God, good, through selfless acts of grace – including righting wrongs. The more we listen to that “true idea voicing good,” the more grace we find.
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