THE Psalmist sang, "Wait on the Lord: be of good courage, and he shall strengthen thine heart: wait, I say, on the Lord" (Psalms 27:14). One student of Christian Science was awakened to the necessity of learning to wait scientifically by a remark made by a co-worker. "You always seem to be waiting for something," she said. An honest analysis revealed to the student that more or less passive waiting for erroneous conditions to disappear or for personal desires to be fulfilled had become habitual. Disappointment, arising from failure to reach humanly outlined objectives, had dulled expectancy. Through inertia he had permitted aggressive suggestions of self-pity, discouragement, and futility to cloud his thinking. The present was being neglected while he was awaiting the elusive future. The promised land of scientific demonstration cannot be entered through such unscientific thinking.
Desiring to be freed from this self-mesmerism, the student prayed earnestly for spiritual enlightenment. A study of the Bible and the writings of Mary Baker Eddy, with the help of the Concordances, was undertaken. He found that our Leader, like the Psalmist, urged us to wait on God, promising that "when we wait patiently on God and seek Truth righteously, He directs our path" (Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 254). Oh, that he might surrender personal sense and self-will and learn to wait patiently on God, the student thought!
Waiting on God, he learned, is not a negative condition of thought. It is not a passive state of suspense. It is an active, positive, Christianly scientific attitude or state of consciousness based upon one's highest discernment of spiritual reality. The real man is not a fallen child of God, striving vainly to regain his original perfect status. Man is and always has been the perfect, complete manifestation of his creator, at one with good. He is not a past or future reflection of God. He is the eternally present expression of infinite Mind.
