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A Christmas message: You are at one with God

A Christian Science perspective: The oneness that Jesus felt and knew is given to you and me, and we always possess it. It is truly a gift more valuable than any other.

  • By Mark Swinney

This Christmas season, I'm remembering when a friend of mine was in labor, working hard to deliver her first child. As it came time for the birth, it just seemed as if it was all too much. She told me later that it was at that moment that she felt closer to God than ever before in her life. In fact, she felt completely at one with God. In that oneness, she drew on the strength of what she knew was God's power. The baby was born and is a blessing for everyone who knows her.

This season, much of the world is celebrating the birth of Jesus. Many find that to celebrate the advent of Jesus is to celebrate his example, his love for humanity, and, markedly, his deep awareness of his oneness with God. Once he prayed, "The glory which thou gavest me I have given them; that they may be one, even as we are one" (John 17:22).

"Even as we are one." When I read through the books of the Bible describing Jesus' words and acts, it's clear that he didn't just know but felt deeply his glorious oneness with God. In that oneness he found all of the strength necessary to heal, to comfort, and, ultimately, to confront and overcome death. And he was aware that this oneness with God wasn't exclusive to him. "The glory which thou gavest me I have given them," he said. This oneness that Jesus felt and knew is given to you and me, and we always possess it. It is truly a gift more valuable than any other.

In her poem called "Christmas Morn," Monitor founder Mary Baker Eddy prayed, "Fill us today/ With all thou art" ("Poems," p. 29). It is in your oneness with God that you are filled to overflowing with peace, intelligence, and great strength. These attributes of God, and many more, flow forth naturally from within you. Your oneness with God assures it. As the evidence of the ever-present goodness that is God, your identity, permanence, and purpose are always intact.

Beautifully, God is cause and you are the result, or effect. Right here and now, you are showing forth God's purely good nature. You and God are distinct as cause and effect, yet you're always the evidence of the character and essence of divine goodness. In your oneness with God, you find yourself in rapport with God's one purpose for you. As it was with Jesus, that purpose, or divine will, for you will always be the stage upon which God's goodness is shown.

This Christmas, and on every day yet to come, there never will be even the slightest separation between divine cause and effect. In Mrs. Eddy's primary work, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," she observes, "Man is the expression of God's being" (p. 470). As God simply is being, the result is you. There isn't any separation at all.

Glorious oneness is your forever status, and it's important to celebrate it. God expresses in you all of the strength necessary to heal and cleanse.

This Christmas morning, humbly let an even deeper awareness of your oneness with God be born in your heart.

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