Article May 29, 1948 Issue

PREPARING FOR HIGHER USEFULNESS

DOUGLAS ROBERTS

As Jesus worked at the carpenter's bench in Joseph's shop in Nazareth, he must, through prayer and meditation, have been preparing ceaselessly for his great lifework of healing and teaching. Before beginning his three-year ministry, the human must ever have been yielding to the divine. Touching on this period in Jesus' experience when he was living with his mother and Joseph, Luke writes as follows (Luke 2:51, 52): "He went down with them, and came to Nazareth, and was subject unto them.... And Jesus increased in wisdom and stature, and in favour with God and man." "Increased in wisdom." Jesus' astonishing unfoldment in wisdom or divine understanding is explained by Mary Baker Eddy in her "Miscellaneous Writings," where she says (p. 166): "Like the leaven that a certain woman hid in three measures of meal, the Science of God and the spiritual idea, named in this century Christian Science, is leavening the lump of human thought, until the whole shall be leavened and all materialism disappear. This action of the divine energy, even if not acknowledged, has come to be seen as diffusing richest blessings, this spiritual idea, or Christ, entered into the minutia of the life of the personal Jesus. It made him an honest man. a good carpenter, and a good man, before it could make him the glorified."

Progressive spiritual unfoldment is also necessary in the case of every student of Christian Science. Our daily experience can be made a preparation for higher usefulness and the demonstration of ultimate perfection. Christian Science shows us how we may so entertain "this spiritual idea, or Christ," that it enters into the minutiae of our personal life, keeping us awake spiritually; and making each one of us an honest man or woman and a good worker, whatever our employment, while leading us ultimately to the full recognition of our true selfhood in the likeness of God.

This pattern of progressive unfoldment, so evident in Jesus' experience, is discernible in lesser degree in other great Bible characters. Moses, for instance, spent many years as a shepherd in Midian, tending the flocks of Jethro, his father-in-law. Moses' faithfulness as a shepherd, together with his spiritual development and growth during forty years, prepared him morally and spiritually for the higher work of leading the children of Israel out of Egypt and giving the Mosaic law to the world.

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