Are you ready to be saved?

''I am not ready to be saved,'' my friend told me. But she knew I had strong faith in God and so began to talk with me about Him. I wondered if she was ''ready to be saved'' and just didn't know it! Paul, a staunch early Christian, proclaimed, ''Whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be saved.'' n1

n1 Acts 2:21.

My friend had heard others talk about being saved, publicly declaring themselves dedicated to Christianity. But some had not been able to live up to their public commitments, so my friend was hesitant.

Christian Science has taught me to agree with Paul. Anyone who calls on God can feel His saving presence - at any time and in any place. And we can be saved again and again, whenever we are confronted with trouble. Paul also concludes, ''By grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God.'' n2

n2 Ephesians 2:8

In reading this article you are, in a sense, calling on the name of the Lord, the one omnipotent Father of all. You are uniting your thought with the supreme power of good and its divine energies.

Every day is a day in which we can be saved. Often we need to be saved from disappointment or pressure or from some failure to do what we know is right. We can call upon God and feel His unfailing calm and uplifting love. As we align our thought with Him, the one Mind, through prayer and Christly living, we can find peace and a spiritually enlightened outlook on the day's business. Spiritual ideas flow into our expectant thought directly from our creator, Mind. These ideas correct and govern human activity.

Depression and stress often come from focusing on our own or others' failings. While we do need to face up to shortcom-ings, we'll do so with dominion as we turn to God and let His will and His loveliness dissolve mortal will and discord. Each time we do this we're not only being saved from mental and physical turmoil, we're taking a concrete step toward lasting salvation.

Christ Jesus' healing life made it clear that understanding - and living by - our relationship to God brings the daily deliverance that leads to the ultimate overcoming of all sin. The Master showed us the way to salvation. So we call him the Saviour. Harper's Bible Dictionarym points out the Biblical basis for this title: ''. . . he is not properly called simply 'a saviour,'m for there are many saviours in the secondary sense; he is properly to be called 'the Saviour,'m since 'in none other is there salvation' (Acts 4:12, 10:36-43).'' n3

n3 Madeleine S. Miller and J. Lane Miller, Harper's Bible Dictionary, 7th ed. (New York: Harper & Brothers, Publishers, 1961), p. 649.

Spiritual momentum, in the form of stirring, healing ideas and righteous impulses, comes to each of us from God as we follow Christ Jesus' example. Letting divine intelligence and love govern our thinking, we won't stay where we are. Frustration will be replaced with a clear sense of how to move ahead, how to advance beyond the stagnant, limited panorama of materiality and express more of the harmony of our actual, spiritual selfhood, God's very likeness. The saving, healing, and progressive power of Mind, when understood and yielded to, provides guidance and safety each day and leads us on toward ultimate and absolute freedom.

God's saving power is available now. In a way, what we really need to be saved from is feeling separate from God, infinite Love. Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, states, '' 'Now,'m cried the apostle , 'is the accepted time; behold, nowm is the day of salvation,' - meaning, not that now men must prepare for a future-world salvation, or safety, but that now is the time in which to experience that salvation in spirit and in life.'' n4

n4 Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 39.

God saves you anew with every prayer for divine guidance and love, and with every effort to put off whatever is unlike the divine nature. And that, ultimately, leads to eternal bliss. DAILY BIBLE VERSE Look unto me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth: for I am God, and there is none else. Isaiah 45:22