A student in a beginning art class was puzzled because the picture he was drawing looked flat. It had no depth. Then his teacher asked, "Where is the sun?" "I didn't want to put the sun in the picture" was the reply. Then, with a few lines here and there the teacher gave the picture a sun, although no sun could be seen. "You must decide where the light is coming from and keep the light source in mind as you draw," she said. The student completed the picture by shading trees and buildings and animals with sunny sides and shadow sides. Now the trees looked like trees, the meadow looked cool and inviting, the cows looked alive, and all was well.
During every conscious moment, we have a picture before our thought and this picture is our own. If our picture looks flat—if life seems dull, if justice seems delayed, if health, joy, or peace seem out of reach— we need to locate the true light source, which is God, divine Love. As we recognize the presence of God, everything we mentally see takes on proper perspective. The good and the evil in the human scene are clearly distinguishable. But in the divine light we can recognize that good is real and evil is unreal. Therefore, we are actually free of dullness, of conflicts, of fears. And this freedom is demonstrable. As we become conscious of the presence of divine Love, our encounter with today and its vicissitudes is not mere survival; it is victory.
Christ Jesus set the standard for Christian work when he said, "The Father hath not left me alone; for I do always those things that please him."john 8:29; When we pray, do we remember that God is our very Life, and do we seek to do "those things that please him"? Do we unselfishly, trustingly, adoringly acknowledge God as the source of light in our picture of life? Then we shall demonstrate the justice of Truth, the beauty of Soul, the immortality of Spirit. The healing we seek will come swiftly and naturally.
As we acknowledge God's presence, we can see clearly the nothingness of the errors that appear in our mental picture, and we can demonstrate the truth of God and His reflection, man. We can heal a disease, prevent an accident, overcome an obstacle to success in business, resolve differences between persons, find a way to meet a financial obligation, eliminate boredom in our daily work, replace a sense of loneliness with joy and love.
We can do these things through prayer. Prayer in Christian Science is a realization of the truth. This prayer usually includes a conscious denial of error. But to be effective, both affirmation and denial must bring to thought a clear realization of the presence of God.
God is Soul. When we feel the presence of Soul, words like I, you, he, and they denote to us reflections of the one Ego, Soul. Personalities which seem to be mixtures of such qualities as right and wrong, pure and impure, strong and weak, lovely and unlovely are no longer difficult to understand or to deal with. When Soul is the light source in our mental view, the right, pure, strong, lovely qualities stand out as real, and their opposites fade out because they attempt to contradict the infinite.
God is Spirit. With Spirit as our source of light, we see that in our world spiritual forces alone are real. We see spiritual ideas —divine sonship, immortal being, spiritual sense, boundless creation, eternal harmony —as substantial; whereas material theories, material personalities, and material things are insubstantial.
In "Unity of Good," Mrs. Eddy gives us a hint as to how we may find God, our divine source of light. She says: "He is near to them who adore Him. To understand Him, without a single taint of our mortal, finite sense of sin, sickness, or death, is to approach Him and become like Him."Un.,p. 4.
If we have struggled long in the effort to heal a disease or to overcome some sense of dullness, frustration, loneliness, or lack, or if we want to look forward to a day of satisfying achievement and well-being, we can gain the good we are seeking by becoming conscious of God with us. But this consciousness demands more of us than merely thinking of God; it demands earnest denial, not only of the things we want to get rid of but of the mortal concepts we entertain, sometimes happily, of ourselves. "Our mortal, finite sense of sin, sickness, or death" must be denied. But more, it must yield to the consciousness of our spiritual selfhood, in which our desires are spiritual and the only things that give us satisfaction are the things of God.
In order to yield in this way, we must improve every opportunity to overcome egotism, self-will, and self-indulgence and to gain humility, affection, self-control, and so on. We cannot be casual about moral improvement. Yesterday's progress is never good enough for today. As we move forward morally, doing "always those things that please" God, we begin to become conscious of God's presence lighting up the dominant truth in the picture before our thought. And as we trust Him and adore Him, our prayers will result in proofs of His power.
