To serve as Reader may seem to be a demanding responsibility—which indeed it is—but it never need be burdensome. Essentially, the demand is to respond to the Christliness of one's being. A profound sense of joy comes to one serving as Reader in a branch Church of Christ, Scientist. Reading presents a unique opportunity to develop a broader, deeper concept of Church and to feel the genuine joy that inevitably follows accelerated spiritual growth. The recognition by fellow church members of the new Reader's spiritual qualifications and fitness to fulfill the obligations of this office awakens within him a desire to bring to the experience all the good inherent in fulfilling its requirements.
This enriching experience comes to bless. It blesses Reader, congregation, church, community, and because of the universal nature of Truth, it can bless the entire world.
Humility, that great elevator of consciousness, brings the initial blessing. Humility provides the fundamental basis for successful reading. It saves the Reader from the treachery of self-glorification, intellectualism, pride. Similarly, personal sense, anxiety, timidity—also expressions of human ego—melt away as the Reader yields to his inseparability from the divine omnipotent Mind, which effortlessly expresses only its own pure, infinite nature. The conviction that God is the Mind of man and that man is God's individualized expression enables every Reader to reach his full potential. The blessing of this conscious oneness with divine substance, Mind, illumines the details of preparation and execution with genuine spiritual inspiration. Every aspect can be divinely inspired and lift the Reader to the heaven of spiritualized thought. Uplifted thought then elevates the reading to that point of inspiration from which it can lead the listener to see his own at-one-ment with God. This heals and regenerates.
