Article September 1, 1956 Issue

APPRECIATION

MARCY BABBITT

What one appreciates, he retains. Christ Jesus said (Matt. 13:12), "Whosoever hath, to him shall be given, and he shall have more abundance." The "haves" are the ones who appreciate what they spiritually are and who increasingly cherish good.

Christ Jesus had the greatest appreciation of Life that anyone has ever had. He knew Life to be God, Spirit, and man to be His image and likeness, to whom has been given dominion over all the earth. Declaring that whoever saw him saw the Father, thus indicating that his true identity was Godlike, the Master refused to permit the carnal mind to depreciate his life or his works. He told his disciples that they were the light of the world, which could not be hid. He knew that his appreciation of their spiritual nature would inspire them to fulfill their mission.

When he washed his disciples' feet, Jesus exemplified to them the Christ demonstrating divine Love in service to mankind. The bigness of a mountain of unholiness or the malignancy of a disease could not tempt him to depreciate his Christlike understanding and thus prevent his casting these errors into the sea of oblivion. Nor could the smallness of a child or the meagerness of five loaves and two fishes in the face of thousands to be fed tempt the Master into belittling God's idea, man, or minimizing the inexhaustible substance of Life. The Master's Christly activity offered proof of God's ever-available and abundant substance and took away from humanity the "have not" sense, in which are summed up all its errors and lacks—discord, sorrow, sin, disease, torment, and death.

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