Today needs you

People who are needed seldom feel incapable. They can accomplish almost anything without seeming to notice themselves. With less sleep than many might consider indispensable, mothers of infants keep round-the-clock feeding schedules going. Trying bravely to free someone from entrapment, rescuers have been known to lift massive weights many times their normal ability to budge.

Do these bursts of unselfishness, stamina, and valor hint at resources that we could tap all the time? Could it be that we need stronger demands to call forth outstanding accomplishment?

From one infinite, perfect God comes one eternal demand for complete perfection. This demand is a demand to work, to leave our laziness and mortal tendencies behind, to move with God's help as directly as possible toward a Christly life, and thus to demonstrate, progressively, the reality of man's spiritual being as God's idea.

The practically and necessity of such a demand is clear when we realize that God and His spiritual offspring never fall short of perfect being and doing. The real man, reflecting God, forever functions at the point of perfection.

In his healing work, Christ Jesus plumbed the infinite capacities of man. He insisted with his works as well as his words: "The Son can do nothing of himself , but what he seeth the Father do: for what things soever he doeth, these also doeth the Son likewise." n1

n1 John 5:19

Jesus yielded his all to divine Life, Truth, and Love. In proportion as we too live in accord with the divine demands, we will find ever-greater imperviousness to evil and inexhaustibility in the interests of good. Even if we seem very far from proving this, our Saviour -- the Christ, Truth, which Jesus taught and practiced -- can and will redeem and restore us.

Until I was an adult, my life was as directionless as a ship without a rudder. A congenital heart condition had restricted my activities, and years of holding back from strenuous activity had settled into the general lethargy of a low-key life.

One day when my health was at a low ebb physically, morally, and spiritually, I read a religious article in The Christian Science Monitor,m just as you are doing now. the article quoted two lines from a hymn: "From duty's claims no life is free,/Behold, today hath need of thee." n2

n2 Christian Science Hymnalm , No. 6

Me, needed? The very thought shocked me into seeking a fuller life. I telephoned a Christian Sience practitioner and began serious study of the Christian Science textbook, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures,m by Mary Baker Eddy, n3 together with the Bible. That was the last day the belief in a heart condition kept me in bed. Over a period of several years, my whole life changed as I was healed. I gained my freedom from habitual smoking, drinking, self-centeredness, and laziness as I grew, through ever-deepening study, in my ability to practice Christian Science. The ensuing twenty-five years have been increasingly healthy, happy, and fruitful.

n3 Mrs. Eddy is the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science

We err when we blame physical conditions for nonachievement. The body depends on our thought as certainly as the broom depends on the hand of the homemaker. As long as we make a god out of the body, we can neither honor the divine command to have one God nor muster the vitality to help our fellowman. But when we rout apathetic idolatry with the purposeful activity of spiritual, right reasoning, prayer becomes practice, and divine Mind masters the erring corporeal senses, alias the corporeality.

The world has a crying need for your God-given talents. Today doesm need you. But equally important to your full salvation -- your redemption from the sin of believing yourself expendable, your deliverance from the half-death of half-living --youm need todaym .

The first sentence of the book that helped me get my life in order promises fulfillment for your life too. There Mrs. Eddy writes: "To those leaning on the sustaining infinite, to-day is big with blessings." n4

n4 Science and Health, p. vii

DAILY BIBLE VERSE Arise therefore, and be do ing. I Chronicles 22:16