Feeling secure

In the face of personal troubles or immense global challenges, security may seem elusive. How we can we know deeply that we're safe, that good is a tangible, enduring reality?

We might begin to answer this question by considering what would thereaten us. the culprit, even more than a belligerent nation or trying circumstance, is a limited, materialistic viewpoint, what we might call material sense. Such a viewpoint labels outward appearance, with all its contradictions and injustices, "reality." It would have us alternately overwhelmed and fascinated by what the eyes and ears report.

But reality, in its truest, deepest sense, isn't rooted in materiality. It isn't defined by conflict and unhappiness.It's permanently grounded in God, divine Spirit, who is totally good and the only creator. If we acknowledge one supreme God and His perpetual love for man, we have to conclude that evil, whatever its dimensions, isn't.m It isn't power and it isn't truth. In the final analysis, it's a deception, and God didn't make it.

"O taste and see that the Lord is good," the Psalmist sang. "Blessed is the man that trusteth in him." n1 We're able to "taste" and "see" God's goodness as we're receptive to His healing power, the Christpower. Christ dispels material sense, the fraudulent feeling that we're separated from God, governed by physical forces, living precariously in matter. We feel acutely the healing influence of the Christ through cultivating a spiritual outlook -- spiritual sense.

n1 Psalms 34:8.

One way spiritual sense is heightened is through study of the Bible, through a perception of its curative message of God's supremacy.Another way is through silent prayer, in which we acknowledge God's unopposable power and feel His nearness.

We also need to check the quality of our thoughts each hour. Sensual thoughts, dishonesty, jealousy, hatred, promote a sense of separation from God and therefore from good. Christ Jesus told us, "Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God." n2 Jesus showed through his life and instruction that security is found in purity, in meekness and love. Living these qualities brings us into accord with the goodness of divine law.

n2 Matthew 5:8.

The fact that man is inseparable from God, governed wisely by Him, never changes. The fact that man is never in danger because he is never really outside God's loving jurisdiction, is unshakable. But we need to prove these facts in our own lives through right thinking and acting of the kind exemplified by Jesus. It's natural for us to do this, because it's our true nature, as God's perfect offspring, to express the divine character.

The source of our securty is clearly indicated in these words of the prophet: "The work of righteousness shall be peace; and the effect of righteousness quietness and assurance for ever." n3

n3 Isaiah 32:17.

Christian Science certainly doesn't suggest that we ignore problems and find security in some sort of escapism or in mere positive thinking. Quite the contrary, it demands that we face up to both individual and world troubles by dealing with the states of thought that promote and perpetuate those troubles.

Yet Science takes us beyond what seems so convincing to the senses to the spiritual and only reality of existence -- the uninvaded harmony of God's creation. It asks us to stand firmly on the side of god's allness through a clear, calm recognition that He ism the only power. It shows us that this premise alone can deliver humanity from the outrageous belief that discord is a fact of existence, that injustice is an inescapable part of life. Jesus proved through his works that evil can be licked by divine power.

Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, explains, "You have simply to preserve a scientific, positive sense of unity with your divine source, and daily demonstrate this." n4 Turning to God in prayer and conforming our lives to the standard Jesus established, we'll feel at one with our divine source. We'll increasingly see through and reject the deceptive evidence of conflict and sadness and witness the harmony of reality, the one and only reality established by the one and only God. We'll fell -- and be -- genuinely secure.

n4 Pulpit and Press,m p. 4.

DAILY BIBLE VERSE Hold thou me up, and I shall be safe. Psalms 119:117