Article October 1, 1949 Issue

WHAT ARE YOU REALLY LEANING ON?

BETTY PARROTT

"To those leaning on the sustaining infinite, to-day is big with blessings." Is your day "big with blessings"? Or is it full of problems and fears? If the latter, ask yourself: What am I really leaning on? On the strong, willing shoulders of a friend? On pride of family, position, education, wealth, reputation, personal appearance, or charm? On a medical diagnosis perhaps? It certainly cannot be upon "the sustaining infinite." Mary Baker Eddy would never have opened the Preface to the textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. vii), with those challenging, comforting words, unless they were capable of certain proof.

Now in order to lean on something, we first have to know that it is really there, and then that it can take our full weight. If we are really to lean and rest on God, unchanging divine Love, the sustaining infinite, He must be real to us.

In a moment of extreme urgency and fear a young Christian Scientist opened the textbook at that first sentence and then prayed humbly and sincerely for deeper understanding so that to her the infinite would become more substantial and real and she could honestly lean on it. A flash of memory took her suddenly back to the great hall at school, where she was taking her matriculation examinations along with seventy other girls. It was the geometry examination, her favorite subject. Half the time had passed, and she was in a panic, hopelessly stuck at the first two questions. To fail in one essential subject meant, in those days, taking every single subject with fresh syllabuses all over again.

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