Articles

We’d known for months that our elder son and his wife, who was pregnant with our first grandchild, were moving to Australia. I thought I was prepared for this, but two days before they left, I was in deep mourning because it felt like another loss in a series of losses after my parents and several dear friends had passed on in recent years.

When challenges persist, we should remember that God is consistently the only power—the only cause and effect.

I’ve always linked gratitude to the idea of praising God. In the Bible, the book of Psalms overflows with powerful expressions of glorifying God, divine Love.

Several years ago, as I got out of bed one morning and began to walk downstairs, I felt discomfort, slight stiffness, and pain in the area of my ankles and lower legs. The first thought I had was that I should walk around a bit to loosen up; and then the word degenerative came to mind.

Late one Saturday night, sitting alone at my desk, I was dreading what I’d agreed to do the next morning—substitute teach a class of teenagers at a Christian Science Sunday School.   I’d done many tough things in life, including covering civil wars as The Christian Science Monitor ’s Africa correspondent and giving speeches to large audiences.

I awoke dreading the day. I was facing responsibilities that I wasn’t looking forward to.

How can we pray for peace effectively? What can we do to make it possible to experience the promise of “on earth peace, good will toward men” ( Luke 2:14 )? The Discoverer of Christian Science, Mary Baker Eddy, was very engaged with this subject. In response to the war between Russia and Japan in 1904 and 1905, at one point she called on all the members of The Mother Church to “pray each day for the amicable settlement of the war” (see The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany, p.

Throughout the Bible God promises that we will know Him, and I find that the practice of Christian Science fulfills this promise. The teachings of Christian Science—the divine laws of God that Christ Jesus demonstrated in his healing mission—awaken us to God’s promises of present perfection and the possibility of seeing these promises made manifest in our daily experience.

The nature of God as pure goodness is naturally reflected in each of us; and Christ, God’s message to mankind, makes us aware of our Godlike identity—the reflection of God, divine Love itself. Christly thoughts come to our immediate rescue to pull us out of any discordant or threatening situation.

I am so grateful for the timely publications of The Mother Church that meet our specific needs. To me, they are proof that God’s love is communicated in ways that are understandable to each of us.