Spiritual Shorts

It was 10:20 one Sunday morning when I arrived at church. The organ prelude had just begun.

On a trip to South Africa, I heard a church member tell of an indigenous daisy ( Gerbera jamesonii) in southern Transvaal that turns its head toward the sunlight. He went out into a field of these flowers to see them all facing the sun.

As a Reader in my local branch Church of Christ, Scientist, I was sitting at the front of church one Sunday morning, watching and welcoming those entering for the church service. I noticed the variety of people coming in, and I started to get caught up in thinking about their personalities, their appearances, and their conversations—in other words, paying attention to the congregation but not praying for it.

Often as I go through my busy day, things that need prayerful attention come to thought—little aches and pains, annoyances at something someone said, fears and anxieties. For a long time my response would be, “I need to pray about that.

Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, devotes almost two and a half pages in the Christian Science textbook to answer the question: “What is man?” ( Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures,  pp. 475–477 ).

Today I was thinking about Jesus’ healing of the woman who had a spirit of infirmity 18 years (see Luke 13:11–13 ). It follows a pattern typical of Jesus’ healings: He saw the woman.

I used to feel concerned that some By-Laws Mary Baker Eddy included in the Manual of The Mother Church seemed outdated or unnecessary for our time. One in particular is on page 48 : “A member of The Mother Church shall not haunt Mrs.

The answer to a question in the March 2014 Journal about the actuality of the Daniel in the lions’ den story reminded me of a story my mother often shared with me. One day when she was three years old, her family drove to a gas station, where the owner kept a large, vicious, snarling dog chained up on the property.

When a friend sent me a fridge magnet with the words “Never, never, never give up,” I thought it an admirable sentiment to follow. However, there’s more to it than just the human element of striving to achieve a goal.

One evening after church, when a friend and I paused to look up at the stars, I was unexpectedly filled with a deep sense of the vastness of the universe and a spiritual oneness—an inclusiveness with it—far greater and different from those times when it seems as if you can almost touch them.   Almost a year later, someone said to me that everything we see is already in our consciousness.