Do you feel important?

You know that throughout the world there are people who hold important offices, both in politics and in business. And maybe you think it must be wonderful to be in a high-level role, soaking up all the glamour and prestige. But have you ever stopped to think how unimportant those positions would be without you?

Just as a machine needs all its parts to function, and even a cog or a washer is essential to its performance, so the operation of politics and business needs us. Presidents and members of parliaments need our support to get elected, and then to govern. Everyone's vote counts. And what would happen to any city, town, village, family, without the actions of its occupants? Each one of us is an integral part of the community and the family.

In fact, you're an essential part of life itself - vital to the existence of love and truth! How could there be life if there was nothing living, or love if no one loved, or truth if no one was honest?

Couldn't you say, then, that you are essential to God? Mary Baker Eddy, who discovered Christian Science, answered the question this way: "As a drop of water is one with the ocean, a ray of light one with the sun, even so God and man, Father and son, are one in being. The Scripture reads: 'For in Him we live, and move, and have our being' " ("Message to The Mother Church for 1902," pg. 12). God needs each one of us to express Him. What is it that tries to take away our self-esteem? That puts blinkers on our eyes, lest we see beyond our plodding, personal view of things to all that is really happening around us, and to us, in the universe God has created?

Throughout the centuries there have always been people who had wonderful glimpses of what was beyond their immediate knowledge of things. From them have come inventions that revolutionized daily living and opened up the land and sky. But these people have also depended on the involvement of other people besides themselves to develop and utilize the opportunities their visions offered. In overcoming sometimes incredible obstacles, they have made the "dominion" they achieved possible to you and me.

For example, when you or I fly, we utilize the dominion over the forces of gravity that the Wright brothers originally achieved. And that's just a hint of what's possible.

"Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect," said Jesus to his disciples (Matt. 5:48). He demonstrated the possibility of doing this. He utilized his understanding of God's omnipotence to exercise dominion over limits God never imposed on him. And he taught others how to utilize this same understanding, by healing the sick and the sinner and directing their thoughts toward their true relationship to God.

Releasing people from imprisoning thoughts of inferiority, hatred, limitation, Jesus healed them of debilitating physical conditions. Moreover, he wanted to show people how to heal as he did. "Christ illustrates that blending with God, his divine Principle, which gives man dominion over all the earth" (Eddy, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," pg. 316).

Right now you can pray, with dominion, about anything that limits you - be it societal or personal. Prayer that starts with the perfection of God and everything He creates can quell whatever clouds your thoughts and prevents you from beholding that God has made you in His very nature - good, perfect, spiritual. You can have that perfectibility which God naturally and unfailingly gives to all.

You may say that even if you are a ray, or expression, of God, you still feel like you're in the clouds at the moment - not sure of where you are, who you are, or what you are doing. But just as the rays of the sun continue to shine despite the clouds, so, too, nothing can stop God from being All. And nothing can stop God from expressing His overwhelming love - through you. He gives you His abundance. He causes you to understand His healing message. He creates you to bear witness to all the aspects of who He is.

You are important to God. Now!

The Christian Science Journal, published monthly, contains in-depth articles about Christian healing.

(c) Copyright 1999. The Christian Science Publishing Society