Article April 21, 1986 Issue

God's man can't be overworked

HOLLY B. SUHI

It was Monday morning. I hadn't slept well. I had been working very hard in my sales job. Although increased sales and new accounts had resulted, the commitment I had made had not yet been realized. Wednesday was the deadline, and every apparent possibility for further sales had already been exhausted. I felt my credibility was on the line. The pressure was on. Tension and heaviness took over my thinking and I became ill. I did not feel well enough to face the public, let alone accomplish a sale.

Feeling overwhelmed, I asked a Christian Science practitioner for help in overcoming the illness. I didn't mention the pressure I felt, since at the time I did not relate the physical discomfort to my mental state. But through the practitioner's support and my own turning to God in prayer, I realized I was needlessly carrying a burden. I began to study and pray to find relief from a sense of myself as a pressured mortal. The definition of God in the Glossary of Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy, who discovered and founded Christian Science, reads: "The great I AM; the all-knowing, all-seeing, all-acting, all-wise, all-loving, and eternal; Principle; Mind; Soul; Spirit; Life; Truth; Love; all substance; intelligence." ^{Science and Health, p. 587.} If God is all those things, I thought, then what is man? The Glossary gives this definition: "The compound idea of infinite Spirit; the spiritual image and likeness of God; the full representation of Mind." ^{Ibid., p. 591.}

In the Biblical account of creation, we read such phrases as "God created," "the Spirit of God moved," "God called," "God made." ^{See Gen., chap. 1.} All creation results from God's doing. Creation is the activity of the infinite, intelligent I AM, God. Man, the image or reflection of God, is the very idea of divine Mind. Like a ray of sunlight, man, the idea of Mind, simply and ceaselessly reflects God's ability, without limit. In reality he bears witness to God's inexhaustibility.