Articles

Our granddaughter Cassidy was to spend the weekend with us. We needed to pick her up from school, but I was nauseous and very uncomfortable.

Recently, instead of being annoyed by the gardener at the park using a noisy weed cutter in an otherwise peaceful environment, I cheerfully remarked, “You think you’ve done your job, and the next time you’re here, the grass has grown again!” We both laughed. As I thought about the grass, I realized that just as it continues to grow, even after being cut down, so do we often feel “cut down” by tragedies, hardship, criticism, and disappointment.

The Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, Mary Baker Eddy, cites Daniel Webster twice in her Prose Works to dismiss the view that Christianity is “fit only for women and weak men. ” To refute this claim, so belittling of the exercise of spiritual power, she quotes two decidedly not weak men: the French emperor Napoleon, who changed the face of Europe by force of arms, and New Englander Daniel Webster, who moved a new nation by the power of his words.

The Bible is a virtual testament to the many ways in which God delivers humanity from enemies, afflictions, and even itself. When the children of Israel were delivered from the Egyptians at the Red Sea, Daniel from the lions, and the Hebrew boys from the flames, it was God who answered their need.

Your invitation in a recent issue to write for the Christian Science periodicals was a welcome nudge to renew my effort to contribute something again. But what?  Late one night as I humbly sat down at the computer in the hope an idea would come, I unexpectedly found a draft of a letter I had started to you two years ago, and forgotten about, after my first testimony was published in the periodicals.

EMPHATIC! “The time for thinkers has come. ” DEMANDING! “Behold, now is the accepted time; behold, now is the day of salvation.

For several years now, I’ve had a nagging regret that I’ve been trying to push under the rug. Each time I think about this certain situation, I feel a deep sense of loss.

A tightrope walker balances on the tightrope, holding the bar firmly in his hands. He steadies his step by looking above the bar, not under.

The title of a critically praised movie from a couple of years ago, All Is Lost, might seem a fitting summary of human experience at times. What a reliable theme loss is—for screenwriters and poets, reporters and politicians.

Can you imagine what it would be like if every member of your branch church had seen Jesus after the resurrection? Would the services of your branch feel different? Would the atmosphere of Sunday School be even more alive?  The resurrection of Jesus transformed those who witnessed it. Seeing his life reinvigorated, untouched by material conditions, must have transported his immediate disciples to a different mental universe—above a sense of life in matter to an understanding of the reality of spiritual existence, and of the solidity of God’s presence and power.