Unpressured activity

A SCHOOLTEACHER was feeling burdened one weekend by end-of-term pressures. The annual inspection of her class was to take place that Monday, and she was hampered in getting the children's work ready by severe pain in her back. She had had a similar experience some years before, when the trouble had been diagnosed as sciatica. She had been told that she would always be subject to attacks. By Sunday evening the pain was worsening, and she became fearful about having to drive to school the next morning. This time she decided to rely on Christian Science for healing. She telephoned a Christian Science practitioner for treatment through prayer. Soon after she put the telephone down she felt the pain disappear; she had a good night's rest, and woke refreshed and ready for work the next morning. There was no recurrence of the difficulty. In prayer the practitioner's thought had been lifted above the limited, mistaken concept of this woman as a pressurized mortal, striving to achieve something that seemed beyond her strength. She discerned the woman's true selfhood as the child of God, effortlessly and painlessly reflecting the infinite strength and resourcefulness of the one divine Mind. Through prayer, the power of the Christ--of the divine influence in human thought--was brought to bear on the situation, and healing resulted. Christ Jesus said: ``Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.'' 1 Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, writes: ``To the burdened and weary, Jesus saith: `Come unto me.' O glorious hope! there remaineth a rest for the righteous, a rest in Christ, a peace in Love.'' 2 The rest that Christ imparts isn't idleness. It's fulfilling activity. Worldly pressure implies undue force and reluctant compliance. Divine impulsion implies God and man in total harmony, and man being led, not driven. The wisdom of Mind can never be overtaxed. The patience of infinite Love is never exhausted. The vigor of divine Life never spends itself. And man expresses all these divine qualities. This spiritual standpoint is quite different from simply willing that human strength, human intellect, or human reason stretch a little more or last a little longer. Instead, it includes a readiness to draw more deeply on spiritual reserves with the confident knowledge that whatever Mind supplies is always sufficient for its purpose, and whatever Mind demands is always both reasonable and practical. In the Christian Science textbook next to the marginal heading ``Fatigue is mental'' is this statement by Mrs. Eddy: ``When you have once conquered a diseased condition of the body through Mind, that condition never recurs, and you have won a point in Science.'' A few lines after that she says, `` The scientific and permanent remedy for fatigue is to learn the power of Mind over the body or any illusion of physical weariness, and so destroy this illusion, for matter cannot be weary and heavy-laden.'' 3 Opening thought to the infinite, we live more spiritually and therefore more freely. 1 Matthew 11:28-30. 2 Message to The Mother Church for 1902, p. 19. 3 Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 217.