A Student of Christian Science was led to ponder the Bible narrative of Elijah as related in I Kings (19:4—12). The mental experience of the prophet, from the wilderness to Mount Horeb, the mount of God, illustrated to her the journey from sense to Soul, from the wilderness of material concepts to the truth of God as Spirit and man as His image and likeness, coexisting with Him. The following unfoldment, bringing spiritual enlightenment and healing, came to this student.
Elijah's life had been threatened, and we read that he "went a day's journey into the wilderness, and came and sat down under a juniper tree: and he requested for himself that he might die; and said, It is enough; now, O Lord, take away my life; for I am not better than my fathers." Let us consider the spiritual meaning of wilderness. In the Glossary of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mary Baker Eddy we find this definition of wilderness (p. 597): "Loneliness; doubt; darkness. Spontaneity of thought and idea; the vestibule in which a material sense of things disappears, and spiritual sense unfolds the great facts of existence." Therefore a wilderness need not remain a place of doubting and despairing, but can become an opportunity for the unfoldment of the spiritual facts of being, if we shut out the mortal erring thought and commune with God, earnestly seeking an understanding of His allness and man's oneness with infinite Spirit. Through this seeking we awake from the dream of life in matter to the fact that man is the idea of infinite Life, ever perfect in that Life. Nor can we stop with seeking. We must strive to attain the spiritualization of thought by which reality is discerned. Thus to human consciousness a material sense of things disappears and the spiritual sense of God and His perfect creation unfolds.
All who humbly desire to lay their earthly all on the altar of divine Love must give up the false, material sense of self for the understanding of true selfhood as God's spiritual and perfect reflection, an understanding which frees from sin, disease, and death. This turning away from sense to Soul, from matter to Spirit, is our acknowledgment of one God, one power. It marks our progress into the realm of Spirit.
