“Where you tend a rose, my lad, a thistle cannot grow” (The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett). What more beautiful rose could there be than life in Christ, the true idea of God, a rose so fragrant and perfect in purpose that it compels our full and most earnest attention, ultimately to the exclusion of all else? And following Christ, Truth, in our everyday life, nurturing every budding opportunity for good, eliminates stagnation and all the other unwanted thistles of sin, disease, and death.
Instead of fretting over difficulties and fears, we can give our attention to spiritual harmony and cultivate grace, goodness, unselfishness, patience, and faith in Spirit. These are the natural fruits of forming our thoughts after Christ’s teachings, and they multiply in inspiration, peace, joy, safety, and healing. They lead to Truth—to what is perennial and strengthening. The choice to accept Christ Jesus as our Exemplar necessarily involves rejecting whatever is unlike Christ, refusing to give it food or space in our thought-garden.
Christian Science teaches unequivocally that God made all, so the true identity of everything is defined by Him and must express Him alone. Our limitless, irrepressible opportunity is to discover the kingdom of heaven within that Jesus spoke of, already designed and established by God. We could call it the divine rose within. It includes the inspired recognition that life is of God, so it is spiritual and eternal, not material and transitory as it appears to uninspired, unenlightened mortal sense.
