Articles

Human sympathy for those who are suffering has impelled some medical, charitable, and religious organizations to find ways to comfort people as they are dying—or even to help hasten death. Some have attempted to comfort people by explaining why they feel God would allow or even cause death.

My first memory of hearing about Jesus was my mother reading the story of the Master throwing the money changers out of the Temple (see Matthew 21:12, 13 ). I couldn’t have been more than three years old, but the story made a distinct impression on me.

In the prophetic book of Isaiah in the Bible we read, “With everlasting kindness will I have mercy on thee, saith the Lord thy Redeemer. For this is as the waters of Noah unto me: for as I have sworn that the waters of Noah should no more go over the earth; so have I sworn that I would not be wroth with thee, nor rebuke thee.

The Journal  is pleased to offer readers the first in an occasional column from the office of Christian Science Practitioner Activities at The Mother Church in Boston. “Pathways to the practice” is autobiographical.

Recently, a friend told me about how she had started offering to pray for people in her community when they mentioned they were having a problem with something. It could be anything: a back problem, travel issues, whatever.

I had to be out of my house in less than two weeks, but the rents in the area had skyrocketed, and when I found another possible place, I was told that forty other prospective tenants had applied for it. I am single and self-employed, and live in a military community where landlords prefer families with a regular paycheck.

I was on a family holiday when my granddaughter noticed that my eye was red. I thought that water had leaked into my mask while we were snorkeling.

As a teen, I learned to drive in a sports car. Exceeding the speed limit was of no concern.

Seen from space, the earth is beautiful, like a bright blue marble with white swirls encircling it amidst colors of brown, yellow, and green. It is amazing to think that we, as children of God, have been given loving dominion over it!  In Genesis, we read that God gave man “dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth” ( 1:26 ).

Are you an Ananias or a Barnabas? In the Bible book The Acts of the Apostles, chapter 9, Saul is on his way to Damascus to arrest and take back to Jerusalem anyone professing what we now call Christianity. Saul was a dreaded figure to the followers of Jesus.