I could hear our two-year-old grandson singing over and over again a popular children's song, "A B C D E F G—H I J K L M N O P." He couldn't seem to get beyond the letter P to complete "The Alphabet Song." He continued learning and singing, however, until he had perfected the song. Now that he is three, he knows the alphabet is not A to P but A to Z, and he sings this with gusto!
As I was thinking of how sweetly he persevered until he had the song and, coincidentally, mastered the alphabet, I came to a delightful way of remembering a rudimental lesson in Christian Science. How often when I was facing some difficult situation and earnestly praying about it, did I pray from A to P? Rightfully beginning with A, the allness of God, I stopped my reasoning at P— still concerned about the "problem." Yet wasn't my need to go further—to persevere from my acknowledgment of God's allness, to Z, the zero, the nothingness of whatever erroneous situation seemed to be confronting me?
I remembered a statement in Science and Health by Mary Baker Eddy: "It is sometimes said that Christian Science teaches the nothingness of sin, sickness, and death, and then teaches how this nothingness is to be saved and healed. The nothingness of nothing is plain; but we need to understand that error is nothing, and that its nothingness is not saved, but must be demonstrated in order to prove the somethingness— yea, the allness—of Truth." Science and Health, p. 346 The marginal heading for this paragraph is "Nothingness of error."
