Why bother with getting to know the Divine?
To me, Jesus provides the answer. One of the first things Jesus preached, according to the Gospel of Mark, implies that a lift of perspective is key to experiencing God’s harmonious kingdom. As the GOD’S WORD Translation puts it, “The time has come, and God’s kingdom is near. Change the way you think and act, and believe the Good News” (1:15). After this, Jesus started healing people, without the usual human diagnostics and medicinal solutions. He often said that faith, a quality of consciousness, made the individuals whole.
Perspective matters. But is knowing God reliant on the workings of human minds? Jesus showed us otherwise in his teaching.
A Jewish religious leader, Nicodemus, came to Jesus saying that he must have been sent by God, given the healings he had accomplished. Jesus responded that we’re only able to see God’s kingdom when we’re “born from above.” Nicodemus thought he was talking about material rebirth, but Jesus replied, “I can guarantee this truth: No one can enter God’s kingdom without being born of water and the Spirit. Flesh and blood give birth to flesh and blood, but the Spirit gives birth to things that are spiritual” (see John 3:1-12, GOD’S WORD Translation).
Jesus is pointing out that we feel and experience the harmony of God’s kingdom when we yield to Spirit’s view, which is spiritual, good, and true. If we accept that Spirit, and not matter, is our source, this changes everything.
So when a problem comes up, we shouldn’t lean on limited, matter-based thinking – where problems seem to come from – but on Spirit, the infinite creator, in which life truly is and only harmony exists.
Accepting only the spiritual as real helps us move through life harmoniously. Mary Baker Eddy, who had a lifelong love of the Bible, discovered Christian Science when she dug into the Scriptures, especially Jesus’ life and words, following a healing she experienced in 1866. For three years she read little else, and after several more years of proving what she was finding, she published “Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures” in 1875, to share what she had discovered.
One hundred and fifty years later, her book still brings out how we can follow Jesus’ example and demonstrate harmony, health, and peace for ourselves and our neighbors. She wrote at the very beginning of the book that “to those leaning on the sustaining infinite, to-day is big with blessings” (p. vii). We can lean on the sustaining infinite for the meeting of all our needs, little or large.
Some time ago, my husband and I were driving through a snowstorm with a car full of family, including a young child. We were almost home when my husband turned off the state highway onto a local road. But the car did not make the turn and we landed in a snowbank instead.
I immediately turned to God, the source of infinite goodness, reminding myself that help and good solutions are always available. Barely before my husband could get out of the car, a pickup truck stopped and two young men got out. Within minutes, they, along with my husband, pushed the car out of the snowbank and redirected it to the road, and we were all on our way again.
Leaning on the sustaining infinite does not mean there will be no trouble. It does mean that as we recognize that God, divine good, is the real, and that we live in Spirit always, we find solutions at hand. We can surrender to divine Love and let Love lead. We can release fear of danger, and see and feel that Life is expressed in many beautiful ways. As we move forward, we can trust that “the cycles of divine light” will brighten the way (Science and Health, p. 135), and that we are cared for every moment.
