With many people the very word destiny gives rise to a feeling of uncertainty and distress. Some resign themselves to accepting what they call their lot, while others attribute to chance, heredity, or fatality the happy or unhappy events which take place. None of these erroneous concepts are accepted by Christian Science, which teaches that destiny, rightly viewed, consists in the infinite unfoldment of divine Mind's plan. God, Love, infinitely good, can bestow on His perfect likeness, man, only spiritual ideas.
To become conscious of the infinite goodness of God and to see the excellence of His perfect plan for His children, we must accept the spiritual unity existing between God and man and work out our own salvation from this standpoint.
The temptation to give presence or power to superstitions and pernicious fears about the future must be promptly overcome by affirming with conviction the omnipotence, omnipresence, and omniscience of divine Mind. A student of Christian Science is not a pessimist, but on the contrary he expresses true optimism or continuous confidence in the affluence of perfect Love and rejoices in reflecting that Love by serving his neighbor. His confidence is explained by Mary Baker Eddy's inspired declaration in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 281): "What is the Ego, whence its origin and what its destiny? The Ego-man is the reflection of the Ego-God; the Ego-man is the image and likeness of perfect Mind, Spirit, divine Principle." This truth leaves no room for bravado or a false concept of safety based upon materiality, but it demonstrates that man lives under the jurisdiction of an infinitely good, omniscient, and omnipresent God. It promotes obedience to Christ Jesus' instruction (Matt. 6:25, 34): "Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink: nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on....Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself." In all humility and trust the sincere thinker lets the hand of divine Love guide his steps out of the troubled realm of the so-called corporeal senses. On this upward way he soon notices how much more easily thought is freed from all hindrances when erroneous human concepts concerning the future are given up.
