"Prepare to meet thy God"

LOUIS J. DU BOIS

How often these words of the prophet Amos, "Prepare to meet thy God," have been used to frighten people, the impression conveyed being that at any moment one may be called upon to answer for a life of sin before a frowning Deity seated upon a judgment throne! Through the spiritual unfoldment of the Scriptures as revealed in Christian Science, one may come to see and use this text in an entirely different sense. Preparing to meet God is really preparing to meet good. Each morning the consideration of this text should place joy and expectancy in one's heart. Throughout the day, whenever it is recalled, it should never fail to supply courage and create confidence and hope. Mrs. Eddy says in "Miscellaneous Writings" (p. 206), "Good is my God, and my God is good." If preparing to meet God is anything but meeting good, then one's concept of God is incorrect.

If we do not meet good in daily living it must be because we have not prepared our thought sufficiently or in the proper manner. Prepare to meet good means to have no expectation of evil, no fear of or belief in evil. This at once exposes the weakness and defects of mortal beliefs, from which we as Christian Scientists are being healed. Divine intelligence does not fear evil. How far from this saving Mind we were when we expected evil, when we prepared our thought for it and it was our daily experience! The stirring command of the prophet Amos should awaken us all to the necessity of a proper preparation of thought to meet good.

There is no real reason why we should not meet good everywhere and at all times, for God is ever present and eternal. God, moreover, is Spirit; and if our thoughts are material we thereby fail to recognize Him and His creation. We must therefore spiritualize our consciousness. This is essential in preparing to meet God. The whole material concept of existence is but a mortal concept, and certainly not the true one, for real existence is spiritual. Evidence that the material concept is doomed to pass away is seen in the fact that many intelligent persons who have mastered several of the material sciences, declare their distrust in material theories and their faith that the spiritual explanation of existence contains the ultimate truth. Christian Science with its demonstrations of spiritual power removes the question beyond the realm of debate, and makes it possible of proof.

To spiritualize our thought is then essential to this preparation. Some people think that they will meet God only after death. Death, however, is but a phase of material belief. Mrs. Eddy says in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 427), "The dream of death must be mastered by Mind here or hereafter." Preparing to meet God, then, is not preparing to die to meet Him. We must meet God in living, not in dying. It is only as we free ourselves from materiality that we understand Life and see God.

The spiritual concept of being is the one Jesus taught. He refuted every so-called law of matter, healed the sick, raised the dead, walked on the water, dealt with the beliefs of matter as the demands of Truth seemed to require—thus proving its nothingness, and showing it to be but a temporary, false concept of substance. Jesus explained to Pilate that his kingdom was not of this world and that he came to bear witness to the truth. Pilate asked, "What is truth?" Because, however, of his lack of capacity to receive or comprehend a reply, due to his materiality, he did not even wait for one but "went out." How many of us, like Pilate, are unprepared to receive the answer to the same question, "What is truth?" Mrs. Eddy says on page 223 of Science and Health, "The efforts of error to answer this question by some ology are vain."Truth includes the qualities, elements, and faculties of the divine Mind. God is Truth. Preparing to meet God, then, is preparing our thought to see and know and understand the divine qualities, to acknowledge their presence and power and allness. Likewise, it means to reject and deny as false evidence any material aspect tending to limit good, or spiritual reality.

There is nothing impractical about this work; and it is what God requires of us. Salvation from evil depends upon it. God is not the "great unknowable," as Herbert Spencer called Him. God, Truth, and the universe are readily comprehensible to the intelligence which God supplies. Very often we find in the child-thought a fuller grasp of these spiritual realities, for to this thought the allness and nearness of God present few difficulties. Is it because the child has had a much shorter acquaintance with materiality? Jesus said, "I thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes." Let us revive our childlike faith in God as good and prepare to see good everywhere and at all times. The cultivation of the spiritual qualities of Mind will bring us nearer to God, and ultimately answer Pilate's question, "What is truth?" by the revelation of good everywhere.

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