William Moody: Let's take another question, and look at our prayer as church members. In what ways can we pray that will attract a genuine response from the community and help establish a greater openness to Christian healing?
Hazel Joynes: Of course there's the "Daily Prayer" in the Manual of The Mother Church by Mrs. Eddy, including: "... and may Thy Word enrich the affections of all mankind, and govern them!" Man., An. VIII, Sect. 4 Sometimes I think of this as "and may Thy Word [may the law of Love] enrich [purify, elevate] the affections [motives, desires] of all mankind, and govern them!" And I feel that sometimes when we say that prayer, we're thinking of the Word of God as governing mankind. Yet we can also see that God governs the affections, the motives and desires, and this is so vital to the healing our world needs.
Tony Periton: I think, too, we can ask, "What is it that was there first in the community?" Was the problem there first? Or isn't the real news of the week found in the Bible Lesson from the Christian Science Quarterly? And, in a way, if we look at what goes on in the community through the lens of the Lesson-Sermon, we see that the most significant news of the week is the inspired message of that Bible Lesson—the gospel, or good news. Because this is really the first news of the week, we can use that Lesson-Sermon in praying about anything that happens in the community.
