Invaluable magazines
I would like to thank you for the lecture insert with the April Journal. My daughter now and again shares with me articles she gets from JSH-Online.com, and this was one she sent to me several weeks ago. I thought the lecture was wonderful, and I was so pleased to see it included in the Journal this month for print readers. There are some of us who have subscribed to the periodicals for many, many years, love to have them in our hands and to pass them on to others, and cannot afford to subscribe to both print and online.
I know that some day in the future, everything will be online, but for the time being and as long as you are still printing, bring it on!
With great thanks and love to all the people, editors, and contributors, who make these magazines available to us. I so look forward to receiving them every week and month, and I know I’m not alone. They are invaluable!
Church—built on the rock
I really appreciated Clara Fuentes’s testimony of a “Quick healing of flu symptoms” in the April issue of The Christian Science Journal. As a Second Reader of her small church, she felt the need to protect the mission and purpose of Church in her prayers when faced with flu symptoms and it was too late to call a substitute. Her testimony certainly enlarged my idea of Church as the “structure of Truth and Love” (Mary Baker Eddy, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 583); that this “structure” was much more than an edifice. It was thought provoking to think of “building” as a synonym for “structure,” especially when used as an active verb.
While I was doing some follow-up study of my own, using the idea of Church as built on the solid and firm spiritual foundation of the rock of Christ, Truth, the word stone came to mind. The standard definition of stone given in the American Dictionary of the English Language, Noah Webster 1828, is from the root of stand, the primary sense being “to set, to fix.” But one surprising definition given is “any thing made of stone; a mirror.” And it goes on to define mirror as “a pattern; an exemplar; that on which men ought to fix their eyes; that which gives a true representation, or in which a true image may be seen.”
What better foundation could we possibly have for our Church than this bright “mirror-stone”—this rock of Christ, Truth, as an exemplar on which to fix our eyes?
‘A cup of cold water’
Thank you so much for the loving addition of Carol Dee Lewis’s lecture, “Healing—because there is no fear in the allness of Love,” in the April Journal! Just like a cup of cold water on a sweltering day, this refreshing gift truly lifted my thought up and out of a depressing resignation to a personal sense of failure in overcoming fear and all its “etceteras” under which I had been laboring.
This lecture was a truly scientific explanation of how and why we can leave all to God, without the slightest vestige of a personal sense of responsibility or risk of failure. And it was also a great answer as to why we study and pray: We pray to know as God knows, and we study to give strength to our praying—not under some sense of oppressive obligation, but as a precious privilege to be awake and alert on our own individual spiritual path.
This will come in very handy in the senior Sunday School class I teach! High school students can appreciate the nature of algebraic equivalencies, when derived from proper logic, so the derivative statement that “divine Love casts out fear.... So, divine Love casts out disease. It’s one and the same action,” will be a fun and challenging exercise this Sunday!
Wonderful feasts
I’m writing to thank Michael Mooslin for his article, “With eyes wide open.” The morning I picked up the March copy of the Journal, I’d heard myself say with longing, “If only by great effort I could grow spiritually.” Instantly I realized that spiritual growth doesn’t come from human effort.
So, I was ready for the wonderful metaphor in Michael’s article of “surrendering completely to God—like a jellyfish floating on the ocean.” The article further explained the metaphysics of yielding to God’s law. The article explicates the doctrine of Christian Science Mary Baker Eddy articulated on page 304 of Science and Health. This doctrine asserts that God can never be deprived of His manifestation or object. That meant that God could not be deprived of me as His perfect manifestation—ever.
I realized I didn’t need to struggle by dint of effort toward Spirit, but that Spirit could not be deprived of my reflection—that nothing could separate Spirit from its expression. This was reconciling myself to God instead of the other way around.
I’ve been discovering that basking in God’s control is far from passive since it strengthens every declaration of truth and every rejection of error. I can’t say how practical and reassuring it is to understand God’s perfect creation as forever intact with its perfect divine Principle. Thanks to editors for the wonderful feasts of Life, Truth, and Love that the periodicals bring.
