Editorial August 23, 1993 Issue

Creatures, pets, and prayer

Barbara M. Vining

To humbly seek to understand how God governs all things must be the chief priority of a follower of Christ Jesus. "Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness," Jesus said (Matt. 6:33). And this responsibility reaches into every facet of a Christian's daily life. Nothing is excluded. Nothing is too trivial to be included in a Christian's prayers.

A childlike receptivity to God's ideas opened up Mrs. Eddy's thought to the full revelation of divine Science, which enables the student of the Bible together with her book Science and Health to understand God and His creation as they really are. God is the all-harmonious divine Principle of all real being. He is infinite, incorporeal Life, Truth, Love, Spirit, Mind, and Soul. These synonyms point to the unlimited diversity of God's nature. And they show the true nature of His creation—man and the universe—for God's creation is His pure and perfect reflection.

The whole universe of spiritual ideas exists in the divine Mind. And God's man is Mind's expression. Mrs. Eddy writes: "Man is idea, the image of Love; he is not physique. He is the compound idea of God, including all right ideas" (Science and Health, p. 475). So you and I, as God's idea, man, include in consciousness the right idea—God's idea—of every creature in the universe. To seek to know and embrace these ideas is what Jesus' followers are expected to do. As a Christian Scientist, I find that to be a great and practical adventure, with touching results in day-to-day living.

Send a comment to the editors