Article May 12, 1945 Issue

"In obedience lies our active rest"

PARK WOLAVER

A Letter from a soldier contained this message: "Tell them back home there are no heathen at the front." When individuals are involved in desperate situations, they instinctively look outside the failing material sense of things for help, and no one need look in vain. The Bible tells us (Ps. 46:1), "God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble."

Can God, one may ask, supply needed rest despite the lack of opportunity to take time for it? Yes. In Article XVII, Section 1, of the Church Manual, Mary Baker Eddy writes, "Truth and Love rest the weary and heavy laden."

Weariness is not a positive condition to be rid of, but a negative belief—the suppositional absence of the spiritual quality of rest. True rest comes with the realization of infinite Mind's unopposed presence, activity, and power, of which man is the expression. Therefore true rest cannot be something stored up in a material body. Man includes rest as an integral quality of his true being. Rest is entirely spiritual, and attends spiritual activity. It accompanies obedience to God's requirement of kindness, joy, wisdom, faith, purity, compassion, and holy ambition. We experience rest humanly when we are "willing rather to be absent from the body, and to be present with the Lord" (II Cor. 5:8); when we gladly turn from false material sense and actively acknowledge and demonstrate man's likeness to Spirit.

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