Article August 31, 1992 Issue

Before you study

There's no better preparation for academic study and tests than prayer—communing with God, the source of all true intelligence.

Robin Scott Collins

The examination is tomorrow. Books and lecture notes are at hand. There is plenty of good light and a quiet place to work. Is there something else to do before you study? Would you consider praying?

Prayer and academics can be comrades. The spiritual qualities associated with a heart in prayer help to build a stronger intellect and direct academic efforts soundly. This is not a matter of desperately grasping for divine intervention. It has more to do with properly identifying the genuine motives that inspire a student's work and career. And it involves understanding and communing with God, the source of all true intelligence.

Intelligence is an eternal quality of God. In the Bible, God is depicted as the source of all understanding and wisdom, of power and creative force. Mrs. Eddy, explaining the relationship between God and man as understood in Christian Science, often uses the term Mind as a name for God and idea as a description of man. She writes in Science and Health: "Immortal man was and is God's image or idea, even the infinite expression of infinite Mind, and immortal man is coexistent and coeternal with that Mind. He has been forever in the eternal Mind, God; but infinite Mind can never be in man, but is reflected by man."

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