Article September 4, 1978 Issue

Reaching out?

STEPHEN D. HELMER

Have you ever been troubled because your attempts to reach out to others didn't seem to produce results? Or because you felt the channels for giving were blocked by conditions you couldn't control? If so, it's heartening to realize that the brilliance of God's being—His "radiancy divine"^{Christian Science Hymnal, No. 206;}—is reflected by man and the universe. God sends a floodtide of blessing that overflows the narrow confines of human circumstance and reaches all who are receptive to it.

Through a mistaken sense of how the love that reflects God, divine Love, operates, we often seem to frustrate our own desire to give. We believe that, like astronauts, we're caught in some gravitational field against which we must exert mighty counter forces in order to reach and impart something to others "out there." How much simpler it would be if we patterned the sun's effortless giving! The sun just radiates and by doing so naturally shines on people in all directions. Understanding this helps us avoid the common error of believing that love is called forth only by an object.

But how can this help us love with greater healing effect? In the universe of Spirit, God is the only source of light and life, and man is His expression. Each of us in his real being glows with the reflected brightness of God's being. So, in seeking to bless others, we need only to radiate our God-derived brilliance—send forth the Christly beam—as Christ Jesus commanded when he said, "Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven."^{Matt. 5:16;} We should not be fooled into believing that our giving is confined to imparting a literal something to another individual. Rather, we need to dwell on being. Instead of struggling like the astronaut against seeming forces of resistance, we can simply let our true, Christly nature shine as we think, speak, and live in accordance with our highest understanding of God and man.