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Coming together to do some good

A Christian Science perspective: There’s a connection between us all that enables us to find our way through anything.

  • By Curt Wahlberg

In our homes, schools, businesses, and governments there continue to be significant issues to resolve. Whether it’s a family member’s well-being and place in society, or whether it’s about a whole population, there’s a need to keep coming together to make decisions and bring momentum to our efforts for good.

It can be difficult, though, to deal with the differences found within a group. Some would say that’s putting it mildly. Even just one significant difference can be enough to derail a conversation or effort. But there’s a monumental connection between us all that enables us to find the way forward through anything. This connection is the foundational basis that our lives share, the original basis for all life. It’s God, the divine Principle at work in our lives.

With wonderful imagery, the Bible explains that we are “the people of his pasture, and the sheep of his hand” (Psalms 95:7). Awareness of this presence, this divine power or Principle, fully equips us for a united effort toward progress.

This is something I’ve increasingly felt in my relations with others. Recently I had an opportunity to benefit our local school by defending its actions, even though we had recently moved one of our kids from that school because his needs weren’t being met there. Although we didn’t like how the school worked through that situation for our son, we’ve felt the influence of God keeping our eyes open to the good that’s going on there. My wife and I continue to try to find and bring to light that good everywhere in the effort to support our community’s progress.

The fact is that God is a presence in everyone’s life, and our commitment to seeing this, feeling this, for ourselves and for our neighbors makes this divine presence feel more alive to us.

In reality, there is only one party, one side, in any situation. It’s God’s. The good that He is doing in us is the ultimate story. It’s what determines our progress. And to come to this path quickly, we should align our consciousness with the divine presence that’s here to be found – the presence that, in reality, we’re actually living in right now. It’s about acknowledging that the Creator of the universe is present in His universe, and then experiencing the good that results from understanding this.

Monitor founder Mary Baker Eddy had this to say on the subject: “With one Father, even God, the whole family of man would be brethren; and with one Mind and that God, or good, the brotherhood of man would consist of Love and Truth, and have unity of Principle and spiritual power which constitute divine Science” (pp. 469-470).

We can all find ways to come together and see the blessings that working together brings.

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Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

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The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

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