Articles

A few months ago I received a letter from my branch church inviting me to a meeting in the interest of improving the outreach of our church. It was a good letter, and I was enjoying it until I came to the paragraph enumerating our "outreach activities": lectures, Reading Room, Sunday School, Monitor advertising and circulation, literature distribution—but not our church services.

My church is a great joy to me! It is small, like the town I live in, but big with love and a sense of purpose. This church has proved, over the years, its place in our community, and the members are respected and looked up to because they are Christian Scientists! They stand united in one strong body, having a genuine sense of love and appreciation for each other, and the result is healing in the community.

The knowledge of the Deity revealed in Christian Science is at work today in human consciousness demonstrating the healing presence of God for all mankind. His presence understood—the every whereness and omnipotence of good—is dissolving the adamantine errors that seem to oppose our God-given birthright of freedom and completeness.

Christian Science is not just a therapeutic agent. It is a way of life—the way of spiritual understanding—of knowing and acting—based on the revealed truth of God and man and their relationship.

When disappointment creeps in, we can turn to God who supplies us with all that we need and more.

Loneliness is not just a matter of being alone, or even solitary, for many people, either through choice or necessity, spend long periods by themselves without feeling lonely. Loneliness is a great desire for close companionship or for the ability to be able to communicate with others.

"Whereas I was blind, now I see. " John 9:25; This is what the young man said to the skeptics who questioned him after Christ Jesus healed him of blindness.

The baptism of Jesus, with its declaration of his divine sonship (see Mark 1:9—11), served as preparation for his temptation, or testing, in the wilderness. Jesus had, as it were, come definitely out into the open after his long period of seclusion and preparation in Nazareth; and now his understanding of the nature of his mission was to be tested.

Are they coming back for more? Your Sunday School class, that is. If not, why not? Are new pupils attending? If not, why not? Are your pupils becoming serious metaphysicians? Can they heal themselves and others through prayer? Are they using spiritual resources to find answers to the deep challenges facing them? There is a great deal of talk about dropouts and decreasing Sunday School attendance.

A person is driving through beautiful country on a major highway. He reflects on how safe and pleasurable an experience it can be when posted speed laws and other traffic rules and warnings are obeyed.