Article March 24, 1956 Issue

OUR HEAVENLY FATHER

CHARLES BING MAYS

Understanding man's son-ship with God is of primary importance if we are to demonstrate spirituality. It was evident by their petition to Christ Jesus (Luke 11:1), "Lord, teach us to pray," that the disciples felt the need for a better concept of man's relationship to God. In response to this humble request, the Way-shower gave them, and the world, what has become known as the Lord's Prayer. Jesus was the most loving man ever to walk the earth. Therefore it is reasonable to assume that this prayer was one he had proved for himself, implying or showing the manner in which he invoked divine aid in healing the sick and the sinning and in raising the dead. This prayer is indeed the correct way to appeal to God.

Let us consider only the first line of this healing supplication: "Our Father which art in heaven." What a magnanimous, all-encompassing sense of divine Love to direct all mankind to pray by acknowledging that man has a heavenly Father! Thereby the foundation is laid in human thought for the destruction of all limitation, evil sense, and the carnal mind. By implication these words reject and remove the belief in an earthly origin and rend asunder the so-called legitimate reasons for the existence of a self-created mortal mind.

The belief that the parent of man is a mortal is the source of inharmony. Job said (14:1), "Man that is born of a woman is of few days, and full of trouble;" while Jesus' teachings on this fundamental point are clear and definite (Matt. 23:9), "Call no man your father upon the earth: for one is your Father, which is in heaven." Man is the blessed child of our heavenly Father.

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