Article October 27, 1986 Issue

Spiritual reconciliation

Where do we start—when we desire to "draw nigh to God"? Do we try to tell God something or do we listen better?

Pamela Sperry Thorndike

I had been struggling off and on with boredom and lack of purpose. One day when I was feeling particularly low, I turned to God in prayer, and these words came to mind: "Christ reconciles man to God, not God to man." I looked in the Christian Science textbook, Science and Health by Mrs. Eddy, to find the entire sentence, which reads, "The atonement of Christ reconciles man to God, not God to man; for the divine Principle of Christ is God, and how can God propitiate Himself?" Science and Health, p. 18.

After reading a little further, I found the whole concept of reconciliation illumined. I realized that so many times in solving problems I had attempted to reconcile God to myself by telling God what the problems were and asking Him to fix them for me. In other words I was asking God to enter the human realm and reorder a phase of it.

But our reconciliation to God requires that we turn to God, Truth—that we see ourselves as inseparable from the one divine Life, infinite Spirit, boundless Love, moving according to God's plan as His pure, spiritual reflection and then act accordingly. In reality we cannot do otherwise, since God is the only Life and Mind there is. In truth we have no life or intelligence separate from Him.

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