Article October 20, 1980 Issue

Singing "the Lord's song in a strange land"

YVONNE J. WILLIAMS

How to communicate! A vital question today, when to those of an older generation the young may seem to speak another language. Being involved with teen-agers, I have often turned away from what I have thought of as the clamor of pop music and its materialistic philosophy only to be forced to listen to what the young are really saying. Sometimes what appears to be a wholesale rejection of the values of the Establishment is essentially a rejection of materialism and a reaching out for the spiritual values and simple truths offered by Christianity.

While driving a teen-age daughter to college recently, I inwardly groaned when she switched on the car radio and the usual music blared forth. But suddenly the words of the song came right out of the radio at me and hung in the air. They were almost the same words as the Psalmist's: "How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land?"^{Ps. 137:4;} I thought, Why that must have been how Jesus felt when trying to reach those preoccupied with materialism and unaware of divine Spirit and the power of Love. But Christ Jesus, because of his understanding of man's relationship to God, knew that whatever needed to be communicated in any situation, Love would reveal. "It is not ye that speak, but the Spirit of your Father which speaketh in you,"^{Matt. 10:20;} he said to his disciples.

Each one of us has the ability to express the spirit of God. In Science and Health Mrs. Eddy explains that divine Spirit is also Mind, filling all space, the substance of all creation, including man. Therefore all is spiritual. The material universe and corporeal man are misconceptions of God's perfect, spiritual creation.

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