Article December 5, 1988 Issue

Advancing years

Years may lapse, but one's usefulness need never decline. We are really in the business of gaining—in beauty, in goodness, in love.

Marilyn Wickstrom

Many people today are faced with problems identified with age. They feel lonely, forgotten, and useless in a world that seems to be leaving them behind. The temptation to feel isolated, to believe that one is beyond help or old and outside the good in the world, that love is for the young, will eventually claim that man is lost and dying or wanting to die, because one feels no purpose or reason to go on living. We do not need to accept this kind of thinking for a single second. It is no part of man's God-given identity.

Life is not contained within the walls of so-called material existence. Life is God, and our true, spiritual individuality reflects God's wholeness and unending perfection. Life is therefore to be cherished and joyously expressed, whatever our circumstances may be. Life in all its vitality and usefulness can never truly be taken away by physical conditions. As one advances in years, he can gain more and more of the true purpose and meaning of Life as Love and discover the beauty and holiness of real existence. "Life is, always has been, and ever will be independent of matter; for Life is God," states the Christian Science textbook, Science and Health by Mrs. Eddy, "and man is the idea of God, not formed materially but spiritually, and not subject to decay and dust."^{Science and Health, p. 200.}

God is the only cause, and thus the only true communicator. In Christian Science we learn that God is ever present. Any thought that would contradict the goodness, all-power, or presence of God has no real authority and thus has no place in consciousness. To understand this is to claim as Christ Jesus did the eternal presence and reality of Life, or God, and to experience a more fulfilling sense of existence. A commitment to living in accord with this understanding opens our thought to healing and regeneration and will open the door on our divinely given vitality and joy. We are loved completely by God, and we are all equally important to Him—as we always have been and forever will be.

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Advancing years

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