Learning to take care of ourselves
MANY valuable citizens could do more for the world if they knew how to take better care of themselves. We can run the whole gamut of improving our diet and exercise, but until we've put our thinking in order through increased spirituality, we remain vulnerable to suffering and sinfulness. And how can we achieve the mental dominion we need unless we can believe in a supreme power that makes sense, a God who is for us, not against us?
In Christian Science we find such a God -- the one God whom we can learn about in the Bible, who is infinite divine intelligence, Spirit, perfect Love. In order to feel the security that Almighty God alone can provide, we're called upon to think and live in accord with Him and with His law of harmony. We're called upon to put off the sensuous, materialistic thinking that would deprive us of feeling His care.
Granted, it is well to follow a normal pattern of feeding and exercising ourselves, but the pattern must not dominate our thought or usurp our spiritual priorities. Spiritual peace of mind is always the primary need.
Christ Jesus didn't look to matter and mortality but to his heavenly Father, God, for his well-being and for the power and authority he needed to do his marvelous healing work. And we can learn to follow his example. ``He that heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent me,'' he promised us, ``hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation; but is passed from death unto life.''1
Speaking of the power of God, divine Mind, to triumph over sickness and death, Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, makes this statement: ``Jesus never taught that drugs, food, air, and exercise could make a man healthy, or that they could destroy human life; nor did he illustrate these errors by his practice. He referred man's harmony to Mind, not to matter, and never tried to make of none effect the sentence of God, which sealed God's condemnation of sin, sickness, and death.''2
It is only as we, today, learn to refer every thought and act to God that we can maintain genuine health and happiness. Acknowledging God's care for us in this way represents the highest sense of caring for ourselves and fortifies us to help others.
Christian Science teaches us to lift our sense of self above the mortal and physical and to recognize the spiritual sense of being, which is the true nature we individually express as sons and daughters of Spirit.
The heaven of perfect spiritual consciousness, the realm of divine reality, discerned through prayer and purification of thought, is not a jungle full of catastrophe, confrontation, predation, and hate. Our prayers can affirm what is always spiritually true, despite the moment's circumstances -- that our heavenly Father is holding us all, spiritual and perfect, in an atmosphere of security and peace, of constructive understanding, of right relationship and universal love.
Maintaining the consciousness of infinite divine Love as supreme, we will help to avert calamities and eliminate the fears and pressures that foster sickness; we will silence the lament of self-pity and depression and nullify the physical disruptions they often cause; we will feel the stimulation of right purpose, a fresh appreciation for the true beauties right at our feet, and gain a whole new zest for living! To conform our thoughts to the purity of the divine nature through the understanding that we are, in truth, God's perfect expression will enable us to feel divine strength and energy in our daily lives; it will harmonize the body. In the words of the Bible, ``Humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God, that he may exalt you in due time: casting all your care upon him; for he careth for you.''3
In truth, man is God's own child, beloved and safe! We need vigilantly to trust this as the divine fact about everyone; to rest in it and thank God for it. What a healing impact such Christly thinking can have on our own lives and on the lives of those included in our thoughts!
1John 5:24. 2Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 232. 3I Peter 5:6, 7. DAILY BIBLE VERSE: Bodily exercise profiteth little: but godliness is profitable unto all things. I Timothy 4:8