A few years ago, a lecturer on Christian Science said something that really stood out to me: “Yeast on a shelf doesn’t leaven the bread.” To make bread, yeast needs to be added to flour, salt, and water, then the ingredients must be stirred, before the resulting dough is allowed to rise, and then baked. I see this lecturer’s statement as a helpful metaphor for the necessity of putting into practice the teachings of Christian Science—cultivating what we’re learning spiritually about God and man’s relation to Him, through applying and living it.
An article reprinted in The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany includes this statement by Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer of Christian Science: “Dear reader, right thinking, right feeling, and right acting—honesty, purity, unselfishness—in youth tend to success, intellectuality, and happiness in manhood” (p. 274).
How might we incorporate these ingredients—right thinking, right feeling, and right acting—into our lives? How frequently have we said to ourselves that we wished we’d given more thought to how we handled a conversation or acted differently in a community or church meeting?
