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Free of dust
Recently I heard a talk given by a world-renowned astronomer. He showed us beautiful pictures of nebulae—the colors and forms defying imagination. He explained that these stellar bodies were composed of cosmic dust—the substance, he said, that we are composed of. (This reminded some of us in the audience of the account in Genesis 2:7 of Adam’s creation from “the dust of the ground.”)
I asked myself what I considered were two essential qualities expressed by the men and women of God’s creating? I came up with intelligence and love. Then I thought: “If I could reach up and grab a handful of cosmic dust and put it on the table next to me, could it express intelligence and love?” Never.
That convinced me that the substance of man is not matter. No form of matter—and no combination of material elements we call our body, including, say, bones, muscles, or nerves—can express any real form of life.
So what is the creative force that animates? It must be a power that transcends matter. And it must be unlimited in every degree, because intelligence and love are expressed infinitely—and have neither beginning nor end.
According to the First Commandment given to us through Moses, there is only one creative power, God. This supreme Being, the originator and ruler of the universe, is not a form with any material component, but is infinite intelligence. Christian Science teaches that God, divine Mind, is the only intelligence, and that God is Love, infinite Spirit, which is His nature. Understanding this, we can joyfully conclude that the only source of life must be God.
The Bible firmly and clearly declares that “God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth” (John 4:24). It also says that we are created in God’s likeness (see Genesis 1:26). So, as His image, we can express only the qualities that comprise His nature.
Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy puts it this way: “As a drop of water is one with the ocean, a ray of light one with the sun, even so God and man, Father and son, are one in being” (p. 361). I like that explanation, because it reminds me that each of us is like God, expressing the perfect quality of His nature.
My conclusion that evening, after having rejected the astronomer’s theory that we are made of cosmic dust, was that we have only the substance of Spirit and express the pure nature of God, having no connection with any aspect of materiality. Intelligence and love (and all the other spiritual qualities we express) exist because God created them and is maintaining them on a permanent basis.
No wonder I emerged from that talk free of dust—and with a firmer, clearer understanding of what I can only describe as true substance.
– Louis E. Benjamin, Gillitts, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa