Sitting atop Mars Hill, overlooking modern-day Athens in the shadow of the majestic Acropolis, I watched as the faint light of dawn began to appear over the distant horizon. My traveling companions and I discussed what it must have been like when Paul was here, so many centuries ago, addressing the Athenians.
As we talked, a man came up and sat nearby on a rock. I suddenly felt his presence and paused. He said, “Go on, I heard you discussing Paul and wanted to listen.” We ended up sharing ideas on the teachings of Christ, and my companions and I felt we were having our own Paul-like mountaintop experience—sitting on Mars Hill, talking about how the light of Christ had transformed our lives—just as the first beams of day illuminated the landscape.
The Christian Science textbook, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy, asks an important question about the dawning of Christ in consciousness: “Is the wise man of to-day believed, when he beholds the light which heralds Christ’s eternal dawn and describes its effulgence?” (p. 95). We may have an occasional experience like this, where some spiritual concept that’s engaging our thinking attracts others, like my friends and I had. But how often do we share inspiration and it falls flat?
Human consciousness buried in a material sense of things resists spiritual truth. It seems that humanity is reluctant to move out of comfort with materialism into spiritual understanding and the dawning of spiritual things. Comfort in our material routine often has to be disrupted before thinking opens to new ways of being. As the saying goes, “The darkest hour precedes the dawn.” Perhaps this is because the nature of God as Love is not understood by casually dipping into the shallows of beliefs immersed in life as material. Thought must rise above a material sense of things to the concept of life as immortal. This is a present possibility, just as much today as it was during the time of Jesus’ resurrection.
The disciples had a hard time believing in Christ—the spiritual, eternal idea of God that Jesus had shown them—before the resurrection. The darkness of the crucifixion—that terrible event that preceded Jesus’ ultimate triumph—brought something incredibly good to humanity. It solidified that real life was in Spirit, God, the only Life, and is undying rather than mortal. When they saw this for themselves, the disciples were lifted out of doubt and darkness, and they spent the rest of their lives sharing it with others. Paul did the same. After he encountered the light of Christ, he shared this vision widely.
Paul’s initial misapprehension of life as mortal had been overturned in this “road to Damascus” moment (see Acts, chap. 9). You could say that this was his own resurrection experience. It awakened him to the understanding that Life is Spirit and that man’s existence continues eternally. Such spiritual views of man and a hunger to understand God bring with them the power to heal. Devoting our lives to understanding these higher views brings healing to the woes of humanity. When Paul understood the truth of what Jesus taught about eternal Life, this formed the foundation of his own teaching, and he spread Christianity further than any of Jesus’ other followers. He traveled ten thousand miles or more across the Roman Empire, speaking to all kinds of people—Jews and non-Jews alike—who were hungry for the message of hope and eternal life that Paul shared. His efforts to include non-Jews in his preaching played a vital role in the growth of Christianity.
Eddy’s Miscellaneous Writings 1883–1896 states, “It is the purpose of divine Love to resurrect the understanding, and the kingdom of God, the reign of harmony already within us.” It goes on, “Abide in His word, and it shall abide in you; and the healing Christ will again be made manifest in the flesh—understood and glorified” (p. 154). In this way, we too can follow in the footsteps of Jesus and share how Christ has dawned in our hearts today.
As mortal thinking relinquishes its misguided desire for comfort in materialism, we find a greater and enduring comfort—the understanding that man, the spiritual likeness of God, dwells in Mind instead of in flesh. And therefore man’s true, spiritual life is unconquerable—deathless. The seeming coming and going of a physical body never affects or touches in any capacity the man of God’s making. When Jesus appeared that morning after the resurrection, he proved this—the uninterrupted continuity of spiritual being.
When thought is open to it, we can experience this reality, the dawning of our own resurrection, every day—lifting us out of the burial of thought in materialism into the understanding and proof of infinite Truth. Maybe the simplest idea of the resurrection is this: that there’s vastly more to be understood about spiritual reality than we can imagine.
If we’re ever discouraged about our efforts, we can take heart in thinking about how the glorious message Jesus shared of the power of the healing Christ was given in a remote part of the Roman Empire two thousand years ago. His unprecedented accomplishments were scarcely noticed by the ruling factions of that time. But they were certainly recognized by Paul, who carried Jesus’ message far and wide.
The power of Truth to open hearts and minds resides within Truth itself. The infinite will not be silent. Christ is forever present in human consciousness, bringing to each of us its message of good, giving voice to the immortality of being and speaking to the hunger and craving in the human heart that materialism can’t ever reach. The divine message of peace and light is tirelessly asserting the reality of the divine idea and the nothingness of matter. Yielding to this truth, humanity awakens from the dream of material existence.
This Christ-power is resurrecting humanity today. It dawns on human thought each time thought reaches out for a better sense of life—as my friends and I found that day on Mars Hill. We were five thousand miles from home, and yet found a sense of comfort in sharing ideas with a stranger about the reality of ever-present, eternal Life—evidence that Paul’s message about Christ is still being heard today.
Larissa Snorek
Associate Editor
