When serving as a soloist in a Church of Christ, Scientist, I think of the solo as a prelude to the Lesson-Sermon.In the Christian Science Quarterly; I don't think of the soloist's performance as a high point for me in the Sunday service or as a time to entertain the congregation with their favorite songs. This musical selection must be more than a mere repetition of some Bible citation from the lesson. Such a verse might be a "safe" choice but would not necessarily be my individual demonstration of divine guidance and inspiration.
The solo is an integral part of the whole hour, and essential to its completeness. Although I have often sung solos with Bible quotations from the lesson, I have done this only when those words were—for me— the key to the spiritual meaning of the whole lesson. I don't use a solo merely because the subject of the Lesson-Sermon appears somewhere in it.
Reading the Bible Lesson each day is a veritable treasure hunt, a divine adventure. A fortune in spiritual substance is in those two books: the Bible, and the Christian Science textbook, Science and Health by Mrs. Eddy. Sometimes I find a key that unlocks the treasure for me—and the clue to my selection of a solo—right in the Golden Text, which I take as setting the basic tone of the lesson.
