Article November 4, 1939 Issue

"What went ye out into the wilderness to see?"

FLORENCE I. EDWARDS

Jesus said: "What went ye out into the wilderness to see? A reed shaken with the wind?"

A Christian Scientist was having a problem with her eyes. Her vision seemed blurred, and there was a belief of pain. Realizing that this condition was the result of wrong thinking on her part, she began searching her thought for the error to be corrected. As she studied the Lesson-Sermon in the Christian Science Quarterly one morning she read these words in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 448): "Blindness and self-righteousness cling fast to iniquity." Then she saw that her thought had been filled with self-righteousness, pride, and arrogance, for she had of late been criticizing nearly everybody with whom she came in contact. After a church service, a board meeting, or a committee meeting, she had found fault with almost everything that had been said or done.

It occurred to her that the ones she had been judging were those for whom she should have expressed the most love, patience, and forbearance; for were they not trying to serve in the best way they were capable of, and using their understanding of Christian Science to the best of their ability? Who was she to say that they were not? Surely God was sustaining, maintaining, and correcting them in His way. Why should she waste her precious moments criticizing their actions, when her task was to do better work herself, love more, give more, and share more? Tears of repentance welled up in her eyes, and in humility she said: "Father, forgive me. Help me to see them and myself as Thou dost. Purify my thought until my vision is as Thine, seeing only Thy reflection everywhere."

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