On the road to Damascus, Saul heard a voice which said, "Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me? it is hard for thee to kick against the pricks" (Acts 26:14). A modern translation of the passage is this: "Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me? It hurts you to kick against the goads." Then followed Saul's remarkable conversion; the change of his name to Paul; his brilliant service to the cause of Christianity; and his enduring love for and loyalty to Christ Jesus.

It was evidently a turning point in Saul's experience when he learned not to resist but humbly to acquiesce in God's plan for him to become a Christian and to aid in disseminating Christianity. Neither should we resist the tender lessons the Christ, Truth, would teach us, those lessons of love which force us to rise into higher, more spiritualized consciousness.

The Christ is here now, as it always has been, to bless and heal. Christian Science teaches us that there is a distinction between Jesus and the Christ; that Jesus was the immaculately conceived but human man; whereas Christ is the incorporeal, divine idea which Jesus demonstrated.

Our beloved Leader, Mrs. Eddy, writes in Science and Health (p. 332), "Christ is the true idea voicing good, the divine message from God to men speaking to the human consciousness." We all can be aware of the presence of the Christ, revealing to our consciousness the glories of God and His unerring direction.

In "Retrospection and Introspection," Mrs. Eddy distills lessons from her own experiences that are valuable to us all. After relating a series of heartbreaking events, she writes (p. 21): "It is well to know, dear reader, that our material, mortal history is but the record of dreams, not of man's real existence, and the dream has no place in the Science of being." She adds, "The heavenly intent of earth's shadows is to chasten the affections, to rebuke human consciousness and turn it gladly from a material, false sense of life and happiness, to spiritual joy and true estimate of being."

Are we turning gladly from matter to Spirit, accepting graciously the experiences that serve to awaken us from the mortal dream of life in matter to the recognition of being as wholly spiritual, wholly good, wholly of God? Sometimes pride, egotism, personal sense, cause us "to kick against the pricks." The opposite of pride is humility; and indeed we must cultivate humility, humility, and more humility if we would avoid self-imposed suffering.

At the time of the war between Russia and Japan in 1905, Mrs. Eddy requested Christian Scientists to pause temporarily in special prayer for peace. As recorded in Miscellany, referring to her request, she states (p. 281), "I cited, as our present need, faith in God's disposal of events." When we cease our willful planning and have complete "faith in God's disposal of events," we no longer "kick against the pricks" but find the peace that passes understanding.

The prophet Isaiah wrote (1:19), "If ye be willing and obedient, ye shall eat the good of the land." Christian Science shows us how to claim the fulfillment of this promise for ourselves. We can let the Christ speak to our consciousness. Then we yield up human will and accede to God's plan for us.

Moreover, we begin to glimpse the glorious fact that we are and always have been God's beloved children. As such we have never had any difficult times, never experienced any suffering; but we have been eternally at one with God, governed harmoniously by His law, kept always in our right relationship to God and to our fellowmen.

In absolute, divine reality there is no need for pricks to force us to progress. We are, in Science, guided and governed as effortlessly as the earth is kept in its orbit.

To be aware of divine reality, God and His perfect spiritual creation under the orderly, happiness-bestowing government of divine law, and to fulfill God's plan for us are our present goals. We can be grateful for every human experience that spurs us toward these goals.