Article March 1, 1924 Issue

"Grace for to-day"

MYRTLE TIMMONS SUTHERLAND

Mrs. Eddy says of the Lord's Prayer, in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 14), "The Lord's Prayer is the prayer of Soul, not of material sense." On page 17, in her spiritual interpretation of this prayer, she interprets the one sentence which might be construed to be a prayer of purely material sense in such a way that it becomes unmistakably and clearly a prayer of Soul. "Give us this day our daily bread" she interprets thus: Give us grace for to-day; feed the famished affections."

We would all, probably, be astounded if we could measure the time we dissipate in dwelling upon yesterdays and forecasting tomorrows. When we begin conscientiously to refuse to occupy thought with memories of the past and fears of the future, then we may truly find and use the riches of to-day, and begin to dwell more securely in the eternal now. A student of Christian Science was gradually delivered from the belief of extreme thinness, by persistently refusing to be weighed, by refusing to accept the material measurement of scales as indicative of the value and importance of one's weight. Another student began to be healed of an acute sense of financial limitation when she stopped adding up figures presented itself for her to increase earning ability. Often circumstances which are altogether tolerable to-day may become intolerable as we dwell upon the thought of how much worse they may be tomorrow. We have no authority for believing that they will be worse tomorrow, except the unreliable authority of an unauthentic past in which we accepted the falsity of material sense instead of the truth of being.

The prayer "Give us grace for to-day" implies, Give us grace sufficient for any circumstance. The amount of grace needed day by day seems to vary. Sometimes in the midst of a quiet, lovely day, when grace apparently abounds, there will come a terrifying thought of some tumultuous tomorrow when the supply of grace may fall short of the need. But the grace of God, because of its very nature, is always sufficient. No material circumstance is able to stand before the gentle, omnipotent potency of divine Love. "When the enemy shall come in like a flood, the Spirit of the Lord shall lift up a standard against him," we are told in Isaiah. Mrs. Eddy's beautiful piece of writing on "Angels," on pages 306 and 307 of "Miscellaneous Writings," is powerful in the healing of anxious thought for the morrow, even as are the immortal words of Jesus on that subject in his Sermon on the Mount. Could there be more assuring words than these: "For your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things,"—reassurance of the completeness and fullness of good?

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