Article February 8, 1941 Issue

Doing Our Part

MARGUERITE ALLEN

What unfailing comfort and joy do students of the Bible find in the many promises which are given in His Word! According to these promises, the man who steadfastly seeks to put God first in his daily life and to love his neighbor as himself will be spiritually endowed with understanding, health, substance, joy, and peace.

In the Scriptural promises there is, however, a condition to be fulfilled before we can reap the blessings of the promise. Are we sometimes more concerned with God's part in the fulfillment of these glorious promises than we are with our own part in seeking to realize them? Do we perhaps watch more closely to see whether Love is answering our prayers than we do to see how well we are making ourselves fitted to receive the blessing? Our important work is to prove our identity as the spiritual selfhood which reflects God and inherits the blessedness which God has ordained for His sons and daughters. Daily, hourly, we are either confirming to ourselves this spiritual identity by righteous thought and deed or losing sight of it, thus cutting ourselves off from the present enjoyment of our rightful inheritance. Let us who are awake to the promises of God at once and eagerly set about taking the steps pointed out as our part in the consummation of the blessing.

How all—inclusive are the words of the Psalmist, "Delight thyself also in the Lord; and he shall give thee the desires of thine heart"! The first word of the verse is highly important, for it defines the condition necessary for inheriting the promise. Work we do for God, for our fellow man, or for the church from a mere sense of duty and obligation does not bring the blessing promised. Only as we find ourselves joyously treading the path of righteousness may we expect to find the promise fulfilled. Delighting ourselves in the knowledge of God, which we gain in Christian Science—of His ever—presence, omnipotence, and merciful loving—kindness—surely satisfies the spiritual longings of our hearts. In such communion we awake to the certainty of the new heaven and the new earth, wherein man, as the image of God, dwells in eternal harmony.

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