One Wednesday evening while sitting in church, I was drawn to notice a small lily plant on the table beside the First Reader. “It is so quiet,” I thought. “It doesn’t make a sound. No waving of its leaves or movement of its single blossom for attention.” I thought of its travels to get to our church. It was probably bought in a store. Its journey may have been a rough one—shoved into one truck and then into another one, all bunched up with other plants, and handled by this person and that one. And all the while it just kept on doing what it was meant to do—shine forth, and be a lily.
I silently cheered the lily’s message to me—“Yes!” We all continue to grow and break through what we might call our “truck experiences.” I then tenderly recalled times in my life when I may have felt shoved into uncomfortable situations, times of feeling all “bunched up” and “roughly handled”—by negative and angry thoughts. It wasn’t long before I learned that when I turned my thought away from the fearful suggestions of the material scene and opened my heart to the laws of Spirit, based on the universal love of God, the “wilting” feeling of helplessness soon vanished. I was lifted out of the dark “truck” experience, into the daylight of Truth.
In Science and Health we read: “. . . progress is the law of God, whose law demands of us only what we can certainly fulfil” (p. 233). God, Life itself, continuously provides all that is needed for the fulfillment of every unique life design. We just need to realize that we are so much more than what appears to be “going on” on the outside. True growth takes place within each spiritual awakening, hidden and away from the world’s harsh influences.
