The story of Jonah speaks of God's great love for us, and of our unavoidable yielding to the tender force of all-healing divine Love. More than the anecdote of Jonah and the whale, this book of the Bible opens the heart and mind to the glory of the all-supporting and all encompassing encompassing, divine Principle, Love.
Jonah was chosen by God to save Israel's ancient enemy, Nineveh, by preaching repentance. But he thought he would have been happier with the opposite—to see revenge and destruction brought down on the city! Every effort to forestall God's plan failed, however. Finally he preached, and the city repented. Later he left the crowds to watch from a little distance and to see if perhaps the city might yet be destroyed for its sins.
In the meantime God had provided a gourd to shade him. Jonah grew fond of this gourd, but the Lord sent a worm to destroy it—so the story goes—and Jonah's grief, combined with the unpleasant effects of the sun, made him want to die. Then God's message came: "Thou hast had pity on the gourd, for the which thou hast not laboured . . .: and should not I spare Nineveh, that great city, wherein are more than six score thousand persons that cannot discern between their right hand and their left hand ...?"1
So Jonah was given a glimpse of the meaning of absolute Love and a graphic example of humanity's inevitable destiny: to be reformed, enveloped, upheld, by Love.
Who of us does not strive for fulfillment? But bit by bit one may find himself forced to abandon his present ideals for higher ones. Perhaps, like Jonah, we encounter struggles and disappointments along the way; but God is still guiding, bringing to light the substance of His unlimited love. And Christian Science brings to view what the eye cannot tell— that is, God and spiritual reality.
This Science speaks of time not as truth but as a limiting measurement that spawns the concept of material evolution. God is Truth, which always was and always is Love. In Science (where time is not), that which is to be has already been, and that which was is now, as the Bible tells us.2 The fullness of God's blessing is forever complete.
Christian Science says: Claim your heritage now. Give up your imperfect sense of reality and surrender to the reality from which we cannot escape— even the boundless blessings from our Father. Nothing can hinder the eventual unfoldment of our home in God, but intelligent spiritual perception can bring it into view. "It is the purpose of divine Love to resurrect the understanding, and the kingdom of God, the reign of harmony already within us,"3 Mrs. Eddy explains.
It is not always self-will that keeps us on the wrong track. Sometimes fear or false beliefs would bind us to the spell of a material destiny. But we don't have to acquiesce.
Constant alertness places us consciously in the keeping of divine Love and impels us to deny the suggestions of a despotic mortal mind. Through the knowledge obtained in Science we can discern error's falsity, and deny it and deny it. From the understanding of what our eternal destiny already is, we can claim and speak the truth we know, and pass sentence on the false and destroy it. We can claim our destiny now, for it is always within consciousness. There is no need to resist till the refining fire of divine Love finally forces our hand to accept what we always have. Love is our light now; its divine inspiration fulfills the prayer that seeks God, Truth, even now.
There are many hypnotic deceptions that would keep us from claiming the heritage we have in God as God's image. There are, for instance, the claims of astrology, which would define our life prospects by the pattern of the stars. We may not believe these things ourselves, but millions do, and they would outline for us a finite destiny that must be denied by an active awareness of what is really going on—namely, man's reflection of the qualities of God. Truth is our destiny now.
Submitting to our true destiny is not, therefore, a passive but a consciously active process. And unless this active process is pursued, we may find ourselves caving in to the magnetism of an erroneous conception of destiny. In other words, we need to keep thought centered on the reality of spiritual being so that we are not drawn into the net of medical or biological beliefs and the destiny they prescribe—such as sickness, age, decay, or personal ambition and failure.
Accepting our true destiny involves the giving up of complacency and the lifting of our concept of ourselves beyond any mortal scale of measurement, into Spirit. The inspired Word of the Scriptures points to this destiny. Our Master, Christ Jesus, taught and demonstrated it. And Mrs. Eddy conveyed to us the Science by which we can claim it here and now and leave the shadows of the past behind. She writes, "When we fully understand our relation to the Divine, we can have no other Mind but His,—no other Love, wisdom, or Truth, no other sense of Life, and no consciousness of the existence of matter or error."4
Let us choose to yield to Mind, for Mind is the true home of our consciousness, eternally. Mind is not hypnotized into believing. Mind, true consciousness, knows.
The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness,
Prepare ye the way of the Lord,
make straight in the desert a highway for our God.
Every valley shall be exalted,
and every mountain and hill shall be made low:
and the crooked shall be made straight,
and the rough places plain:
and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed,
and all flesh shall see it together:
for the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it.
Isaiah 40:3-5
