Whose life is it?

Forty years ago, a movie came out called “Whose Life Is It Anyway?” It was about a sculptor who had been diagnosed as permanently paralyzed and wanted to die. As the movie’s title suggests, we often speak and think about our life as though it’s something that belongs to us. From that perspective, life is a thing: It can be smooth or rough; it can be short or long; it can be given or taken away.

But the Hebrew Scriptures speak of God as our life. Moses told the Israelites, “The Lord thy God ... is thy life, and the length of thy days” (Deuteronomy 30:20). The profound spiritual thinker Mary Baker Eddy writes in her magnum opus, “Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures,” “Mortals have a very imperfect sense of the spiritual man and of the infinite range of his thought. To him belongs eternal Life” (p. 258).

To be able to say that God is our life involves a radically new way of looking at ourselves – of thinking about our real identity. Now, today, we can begin to redefine ourselves, starting with that simple idea: “God is my life.” Among other things, this fact enables us to acknowledge that we have inexhaustible vitality, indomitable strength, graceful movement, and endless energy.

Some time ago, on returning from a strenuous trip to Africa, my wife came down with a severe case of yellow fever. Total fatigue was one of the symptoms. We prayed together to understand more fully Moses’ statement that God is our life.

Strikingly, Life is one of the names by which Mrs. Eddy identifies God, and as part of her answer to the question “What is Life?” she states, “Life is neither in nor of matter” (Science and Health, p. 469). My wife and I saw that our goal was not to do something with or to matter – a material body. Rather, we prayed to appreciate more fully that she was the direct manifestation of divine Life, God, Spirit. What a difference!

We could see so clearly that my wife was inseverably one with her divine source, with her Father which is in heaven, that the notion of a life separate from God began to appear ridiculous. We gradually came to appreciate the idea that just as she was reflecting God, divine Life was living her.

In prayer, it became clear to both of us that to identify God as Life, the source and nature of all existence, is to turn away from the notion of life being infused into matter. The concept of a physical body receded from our thinking, giving place to a spiritual sense of life as vibrancy of thought.

As we prayed, the return of vivacity in my wife’s own manifestation of Life came gradually but surely. The yellow complexion disappeared; movement became natural, even joyous. The healing was complete, with no lingering effects. This experience showed me just how important it is to turn away from all the information that our physical senses are reporting when we’re focused on the body, and to turn thought instead to divine Life and its vibrant expression.

According to Christ Jesus’ biographers, the Gospel writers, he speaks frequently – even urgently – of the kingdom of God. He particularly addresses the tendency to see this kingdom as something far off – a tendency that is still common today. Jesus assures his followers that they can and must “change [their] hearts and minds – for the kingdom of Heaven has arrived” (Matthew 4:17, J. B. Phillips, “The New Testament in Modern English,” Revised Student Edition).

We, too, can and must enter this kingdom mentally, with our “hearts and minds.” We do this when we see Life as God and therefore, permanent.

This kingdom is mental, and thought is where we perfect the utilization of our spiritual sense. Then we understand God’s kingdom not as distant but as actually here. It is here, mentally, where we turn toward an acknowledgment of all of us as God’s creation – the pure, perfect image of Life, bubbling over with originality, activity, and beauty.

Our spiritual sense enables us to identify ourselves as well as our neighbors and all creations of God spiritually. Nothing has a life of its own, separate from God; each is a beautiful expression of divine Life itself.

Adapted from an article published in the Sept. 12, 2022, issue of the Christian Science Sentinel.