Are in you or out of the game?
It’s been said about baseball that there’re two kinds of players. One kind play just to be in the game; the other kind play to win. I suppose that’s true in any field of endeavor.
So... what kind of player are you? Do you play just to be in the game or do you play to win?
Or, perhaps a more pointed question is: what kind of pray-er are you? Do you pray just to pray and say that you tried or do you pray to succeed?
That’s the question, isn't it?
Prayer that seeks God, what He is and what He does, is prayer that succeeds. Being successful pray-ers it’s necessary to keep thought in line with God. Then the natural result is that it is expressed in line with God.
But what if it appears that prayer isn't working? Why does it seem that there are unfinished problems? One answer could be because of the belief in cruel creeds.
The basis of the word creed shows that it means to believe, to trust, to entrust. In Old Irish the word was cretim and it literally meant, ‘I believe.’ So, in dealing with the any sense of inconclusion we wouldn’t want necessarily to do away with creed, that is, with a basic foundation of belief and understanding. Christian Science teaches that the highest creed is divine Science (S&H 471), or the laws of God.
What we want to do away with are creeds that hamper spirituality (S&H 234) - or, more simply put, we want to do away with creeds that are cruel, limiting, man-made.
Man-made creeds not only hamper spirituality they can be the basis of seeming unending difficulties because they’re based upon a false sense of trust and reality.
We wouldn’t want to say ‘I believe’ to anything that is unreal or not God-made. We would want to say ‘I believe’ to what we do trust in. We want to say ‘I believe’ in God and His power. We want to say ‘I believe’ in the highest creed: Divine Science, the laws of God that determine man's relationship to God. But, even more, we want to get to the point where we say ‘I understand and so I demonstrate.’
Put another way, we want to get to the point that we are demonstrating Christly deeds: ‘healing the sick, raising the dead, cleansing the lepers, casting out demons.’ We want to get to the point where any cruel creed no longer sways us towards sin, disease, death, as if God originated them!
Creeds that are not God-established are false and the are void of Christly thoughts and actions. They can be labeled many different things but perhaps the easiest way to think of them is as false laws. False laws of material heredity, false laws that declare matter and its machinations to be necessary, false laws of addiction, or whatever we find our thought kowtowing to that declares matter to be above Spirit. We might even say that Science and Health defines the endeavors of cruel creeds when it speaks of their attempts to ‘hold Spirit in the grasp of matter’ (S&H 28).
Cruel creeds and their claims of inconclusion go directly against the great Paul’s instruction to the Corinthians when he said, “Every man’s work shall be made manifest: for the day shall declare it” (I Cor.3:13).
The day shall declare it. This means we are not bystanders on the field of battle but successful, active, players, or should I say successful, active pray-ers!
‘I believe,’ is the key here. Christ Jesus taught, “as thou hast believed, so be it done unto thee” (Matt.8:13).
Man, God's child, always exists at the standpoint of opportunity - at the standpoint of doing Christly deeds, of thinking Christly thoughts. And man is capable of Christly thoughts and deeds because he is the reflection of the one infinite God, good.
This word, opportunity, is really based in initiating action rather than waiting for action. Sometimes we think of opportunity as something that comes and goes. An event. A circumstance. A happening. An incident. However, the root of the word shows that it stems from what one does. Not from what one waits on. In other words, the correct usage could be stated that one has the opportunity to do, to be, to act; rather than just sit around and hope for the opportunity.
So, man is always, at any moment, able to act, to do, to be Christ-like. Man is always, at any moment, able to love, to help, to think clearly, to be God’s image. Through scripture, we learn that we don’t need just to expect something good in the future, we expect it right now, at this moment. And, we can actually, spiritually understand that man already has what he needs.
In short, opportunity is active, not passive.
So, because man is always at the standpoint of opportunity he is always at the standpoint of perfection. Time and its limitations have nothing to do with his perfection.
Time and limitations will always try to sidetrack us into doing what we should not do or not do what we should.
Opportunity is active not passive and so the spiritual awareness of God’s presence and power, His will and His kingdom that has come, is the panacea to any difficulty that has been long on the road to healing because in the presence of God there is only God and man, nothing else.
Christ Jesus knew that he was always at the point of opportunity to be and to do good. He knew he was always at this standpoint because he knew, as God's image, there was never an opportunity to do or be anything else than God's child.
Mrs. Eddy, the author of Science and Health, writes, “Jesus cast out evils, mediating between what is and what is not, until a perfect consciousness is attained” (N&Y p3l). Jesus prayerfully mediated between what was real and what is unreal, what is good and what is bad, what is God-given and what is not God-given; and this is how he overcame any sense of inconclusion with his prayers. He understood differently, -- spiritually.
General Patton once said to his soldiers, “Now if you are going to win any battle you have to do one thing. You have to make the mind run the body. Never let the body tell the mind what to do.” We, too, can spiritually understanding the advantage of letting divine Mind run the body, never letting the body run us.
What are our hearts being made ready for? Isn’t it to understand differently, as well?
Mark Twain once said, “When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant. I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.”
You and I may be astonished at how much we’ve learned when we spiritually come to understand that the presence of the Christ is the presence of the real man.
Christ, the right idea of man, is the remedy to the claim of inconclusion and all other cruel creeds. It’s this Christ that is "in you, the hope of glory" that heals.
It’s been said about baseball that there’re two kinds of players. One kind play just to be in the game; the other kind play to win. I suppose that’s true in any field of endeavor.
So... what kind of player are you? Do you play just to be in the game or do you play to win?
Or, perhaps a more pointed question is: what kind of
pray-er
are you? Do you pray just to pray and say that you tried or do you pray to succeed?
That’s the question, isn't it?
Prayer that seeks God, what He is and what He does, is prayer that succeeds. Being successful pray-ers it’s necessary to keep thought in line with God. Then the natural result is that it is expressed in line with God.
But what if it appears that prayer isn't working? Why does it seem that there are unfinished problems? One answer could be because of the belief in cruel creeds.
The basis of the word creed shows that it means to believe, to trust, to entrust. In Old Irish the word was cretim and it literally meant, ‘I believe.’ So, in dealing with the any sense of inconclusion we wouldn’t want necessarily to do away with creed, that is, with a basic foundation of belief and understanding. Christian Science teaches that the highest creed is divine Science (S&H 471), or the laws of God.
What we want to do away with are creeds that hamper spirituality (S&H 234) - or, more simply put, we want to do away with creeds that are cruel, limiting, man-made.
Man-made creeds not only hamper spirituality they can be the basis of seeming unending difficulties because they’re based upon a false sense of trust and reality.
We wouldn’t want to say ‘I believe’ to anything that is unreal or not God-made. We would want to say ‘I believe’ to what we do trust in. We want to say ‘I believe’ in God and His power. We want to say ‘I believe’ in the highest creed: Divine Science, the laws of God that determine man's relationship to God. But, even more, we want to get to the point where we say ‘I understand and so I demonstrate.’
Put another way, we want to get to the point that we are demonstrating Christly deeds: ‘healing the sick, raising the dead, cleansing the lepers, casting out demons.’ We want to get to the point where any cruel creed no longer sways us towards sin, disease, death, as if God originated them!
Creeds that are not God-established are false and the are void of Christly thoughts and actions. They can be labeled many different things but perhaps the easiest way to think of them is as false laws. False laws of material heredity, false laws that declare matter and its machinations to be necessary, false laws of addiction, or whatever we find our thought kowtowing to that declares matter to be above Spirit. We might even
say that
Science and Health
defines the endeavors of cruel creeds when it speaks of their attempts to ‘hold Spirit in the grasp of matter’ (S&H 28).
Cruel creeds and their claims of inconclusion go directly against the great Paul’s instruction to the Corinthians when he said, “Every man’s work shall be made manifest: for the day shall declare it” (I Cor.3:13).
The day shall declare it. This means we are not bystanders on the field of battle but successful, active, players, or should I say successful, active
pray-ers!
‘I believe,’ is the key here. Christ Jesus taught, “as thou hast believed, so be it done unto thee” (Matt.8:13).
Man, God's child, always exists at the standpoint of opportunity - at the standpoint of doing Christly deeds, of thinking Christly thoughts. And man is capable of Christly thoughts and deeds because he is the reflection of the one infinite God, good.
This word, opportunity, is really based in initiating action rather than waiting for action. Sometimes we think of opportunity as something that comes and goes. An event. A circumstance. A happening. An incident. However, the root of the word shows that it stems from what one does. Not from what one waits on. In other words, the correct usage could be stated that one has the opportunity to do, to be, to act; rather than just sit around and hope for the opportunity.
So, man is always, at any moment, able to act, to do, to be Christ-like. Man is always, at any moment, able to love, to help, to think clearly, to be God’s image. Through scripture, we learn that we don’t need just to expect something good in the future, we expect it right now, at this moment. And, we can actually, spiritually understand that man already has what he needs.
In short, opportunity is active, not passive.
So, because man is always at the standpoint of opportunity he is always at the standpoint of perfection. Time and its limitations have nothing to do with his perfection.
Time and limitations will always try to sidetrack us into doing what we should not do or not do what we should.
Opportunity is active not passive and so the spiritual awareness of God’s presence and power, His will and His kingdom that has come, is the panacea to any difficulty that has been long on the road to healing because in the presence of God there is only God and man, nothing else.
Christ Jesus knew that he was always at the point of opportunity to be and to do good. He knew he was always at this standpoint because he knew, as God's image, there was never an opportunity to do or be anything else than God's child.
Mrs. Eddy, the author of
Science and Health,
writes, “Jesus cast out evils, mediating between what is and what is not, until a perfect consciousness is attained” (N&Y p3l). Jesus prayerfully mediated between what was real and what is unreal, what is good and what is bad, what is God-given and what is not God-given; and this is how he overcame any sense of inconclusion with his prayers. He understood differently, -- spiritually.
General Patton once said to his soldiers, “Now if you are going to win any battle you have to do one thing. You have to make the mind run the body. Never let the body tell the mind what to do.” We, too, can spiritually understanding the advantage of letting divine Mind run the body, never letting the body run us.
What are our hearts being made ready for? Isn’t it to understand differently, as well?
Mark Twain once said, “When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant. I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.”
You and I may be astonished at how much we’ve learned when we spiritually come to understand that the presence of the Christ is the presence of the real man.
Christ, the right idea of man, is the remedy to the claim of inconclusion and all other cruel creeds. It’s this Christ that is "in you, the hope of glory" that heals.
