One Sunday during a challenging time in my life, I was sitting in a Christian Science church service. As I sat there praying, I asked God, “What can I do to be more like You?” Instantly an answer came to my thinking: “Nothing.” My incredulous response was, “But I’m getting divorced,” which I then followed up with a laundry list of other reasons why that answer had to be wrong. I asked again, and God’s response was again immediate. I heard the calming “still small voice” (I Kings 19:12) say, “My work in you is finished. You cannot add to it or take away from it.”
What a milestone moment! I began to deeply ponder why this is true, despite the continual need we each have for spiritual growth.
Christ Jesus said, “Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect” (Matthew 5:48). And Mary Baker Eddy, the discoverer of Christian Science, writes in “Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures,” “The Christlike understanding of scientific being and divine healing includes a perfect Principle and idea, – perfect God and perfect man, – as the basis of thought and demonstration” (p. 259).
That day, I earnestly let God, who is Love, reform my thinking, which then began to gain strength and clarity. My view of myself rose above a false sense of identity as a human personality so that I could see what is true – that God, Spirit, knows me as His spiritual, perfect, and pure creation, free of fear, doubt, anxiety, and self-condemnation.
God’s infinite love was right there speaking to me as I reached out to Him. I realized that God had always been there and would always guide my listening thought with loving and transforming messages of peace, health, and joy.
God is always speaking. In the opening chapter of the book of Genesis, we read the repeated phrase “And God said.” To me, this is a call to stop and listen, because what follows are divine facts about God’s spiritual creation of man and the universe, culminating in that glorious revelation, “And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good” (verse 31).
To understand ourselves as the “very good” creation of Spirit, God, is to see ourselves as forever unfallen from our original perfect state. We can rejoice that the Christ, the true idea of God demonstrated by Jesus, is still here to comfort and instruct us. In our journey from a material view of God and man to the spiritual understanding of both, we will find our true image to be Godlike.
The pure and simple Christ message is God speaking to us, lovingly comforting us with the fact that we are His image, His reflection, spiritual and good, not material and flawed, and that we can be free from fear. And the teachings and demonstrations of Christ Jesus set us on the solid foundation of knowing and experiencing God’s loving and unchangeable law. Christ – the true idea of God – is the key to how Jesus healed the sick and sinning and overcame the world, and God’s loving invitation is for us to do the same.
Just as darkness has no power to oppose the dawn of a new day, God’s love and its transforming effect cannot be stopped.
On that pivotal day in church, God was imparting to me the comforting message of Christ’s salvation, coupled with the recognition of the discipline required to demonstrate it. My divorce was amicable. I made sure that my ex-wife was secure in a new home and that our three children were provided for. I remarried, and my wife and I enjoy a happy and rewarding relationship.
The Apostle Paul wrote, “For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war after the flesh: (For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strong holds;) casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ” (II Corinthians 10:3-5).
We can daily strive to see beyond a dark, material view of life and to bring every thought into the light of Christ. As we watch and pray, we are assured that with fidelity and obedience to Christ, Truth, we wear a God-given crown of peace. And we can rejoice over lessons learned, victories won, and more spiritual discoveries to be made.
Adapted from an article published in the Nov. 25, 2024, issue of the Christian Science Sentinel.
