“Where you tend a rose, my lad, a thistle cannot grow” (The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett). What more beautiful rose could there be than life in Christ, the true idea of God, a rose so fragrant and perfect in purpose that it compels our full and most earnest attention, ultimately to the exclusion of all else? And following Christ, Truth, in our everyday life, nurturing every budding opportunity for good, eliminates stagnation and all the other unwanted thistles of sin, disease, and death.
Instead of fretting over difficulties and fears, we can give our attention to spiritual harmony and cultivate grace, goodness, unselfishness, patience, and faith in Spirit. These are the natural fruits of forming our thoughts after Christ’s teachings, and they multiply in inspiration, peace, joy, safety, and healing. They lead to Truth—to what is perennial and strengthening. The choice to accept Christ Jesus as our Exemplar necessarily involves rejecting whatever is unlike Christ, refusing to give it food or space in our thought-garden.
Christian Science teaches unequivocally that God made all, so the true identity of everything is defined by Him and must express Him alone. Our limitless, irrepressible opportunity is to discover the kingdom of heaven within that Jesus spoke of, already designed and established by God. We could call it the divine rose within. It includes the inspired recognition that life is of God, so it is spiritual and eternal, not material and transitory as it appears to uninspired, unenlightened mortal sense.
Christ reveals that God is all good and that we, as His children, can and should trust only Him to feed us with inspiration and guide our progress. This trust is rigorous and vigorous. It demands integrity of thought and adherence to Truth—a faithfulness beyond the world’s concept or comprehension. And with this devotion comes endurance and “the peace of God, which passeth all understanding” (Philippians 4:7).
What a gift we have been honored to receive in the perfect and prodigious life of Christ Jesus. His example feeds our thoughts and desires with hope, strength, and gratitude to God. The inspiration from this gift of God is immeasurable. It has the capacity to dislodge and replace any sad, sick, or soulless sense of life with the beauty of holiness, devotion to Spirit, and to show forth health, freedom, peace—all that God eternally bestows on His cherished children.
When Nicodemus the Pharisee approached Jesus acknowledging he had come from God, Jesus replied, “Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God” (John 3:3). This might seem a radical form of growth. But to produce a rose, we need to start with a rose seed—i.e., we can’t turn a thistle or mortal man into a rose. We entirely replace the mortal misperception with spiritual truth. To do this, the premise of our thinking and being must be reconceived spiritually. This repentance (rethinking) involves finding God as the only creator, and ourselves as His spiritual creation. We see life made new in our thinking by moving its base from matter and its discord and destruction, to Spirit and its goodness and health. Lifting our thought to God, Spirit, as a seeker of Truth, we are blessed with the knowledge that the answers to life’s enigmas are entirely spiritual and comfortingly available.
Jesus’ life stands as a beacon to guide us clearly to this spiritual sense of life, and lead us steadily to an understanding and active demonstration of Truth. It warns us not to rely on fallible physical sense, but on what God has indubitably shown is divine in origin and expression. Christ’s promises, prophecies, and proofs in the Bible guide us to life, not death, and are so far beyond any human conception of goodness or God that they command our whole-hearted attention and awe.
A By-Law read every month in the Sunday services of Churches of Christ, Scientist, begins, “Neither animosity nor mere personal attachment should impel the motives or acts of the members of The Mother Church” (Mary Baker Eddy, Manual of The Mother Church, p. 40). This instructive rule draws attention to the fact that relinquishing attachment to a merely personal sense of ourselves and others is vital to our growth in emulating Christ.
Mrs. Eddy, who discovered and founded Christian Science, also writes that “ignorance of self is the most stubborn belief to overcome” (The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany, p. 233). Resistance to healing can often be removed by sowing meekness, self-correction, self-denial, and deeds of mercy in place of pride, apathy, selfishness, and anger. Christ-informed self-examination uncovers and unties the myriad ways material, erroneous thoughts would creep into and tangle up our thinking. Through this process we gain humility. Our attachment to self-centered, man-made theories fades. And we are relieved of subtly cherished self-righteousness, self-assertion, and self-certainty. Meekness may not be comfortable to a self-satisfied personal ego, but it brings healing winds of freshness and freedom to the seeking heart and tender affections that crave a purer atmosphere and calmer consciousness.
Some time ago I experienced an uncomfortable recurring physical condition that did not immediately yield despite my conscientious prayers. I received help at brief times from a Christian Science practitioner, and there were times when I thought the condition was healed, but it kept resurfacing. It didn’t restrict me from pursuing my normal activities, but it made them more taxing and often kept me awake at night.
I was more disheartened that the condition kept returning than by the physical discomfort, even though the latter was severe at times. But I resolved to stick with my prayers because I felt the physical discomfort was a manifestation of my deeper disturbance about what appeared to be a proliferation of beguiling and oppressive belief systems in the world.
One night, feeling deeply discouraged, I turned my thought more intently to God and His Christ to counter the mental pull toward feelings of defeat. And what came to mind was Jesus’ beautiful example of overcoming every conceivable obstacle in his path. This message felt like a gentle, sweet friend encouraging me to rejoice in God’s goodness and love, to completely pledge my heart and soul to reflecting this love, and let this be my healing prayer. I gave the physical symptoms no more consideration. As I stilled my thought resolutely and steadfastly, a wonderful peace gently dawned, and I saw there was no self-projected mortal “me” struggling to know God—there was only God and what He knew me to be.
Old fears dropped away, unresolved questions were clearly answered, purer thoughts replaced ones that I could now see were provoked or prejudiced. I learned to more consistently and insistently turn away from thoughts that centered around myself and what I was doing or feeling, and to more naturally and completely turn to what God is knowing, seeing, and doing each day. This reformed my thinking, and I felt made new. The physical condition completely faded from my experience.
Going forward, a promise from the Christian Science textbook encouraged me to continue my healing focus on the rose of life in Christ—on knowing God: “The purification of sense and self is a proof of progress” (Mary Baker Eddy, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 324). Nothing can stop this divine growth, and healing is its natural and inevitable fruit. Listening for and implementing God’s will, we plant ourselves in Christ, the ideal Truth, and no mental space is left for weeds of fear to seed themselves. Whether our growth is fast or slow, we have chosen to work in God’s garden, where only good can grow.