Editorial January 9, 1995 Issue

The power that God bestows

William E. Moody

In recent weeks, editorials in the Sentinel have pointed to the true source of man's peace and joy. The Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, Mary Baker Eddy, makes it clear in her writings that all true, lasting peace and joy—all good— are found in God. A poem of hers, later set to music in the Christian Science Hymnal, includes the line "O gentle presence, peace and joy and power ..." (No. 207).

As with the longing for genuine peace and joy, mankind also cries out to be empowered. Impoverished developing countries struggle to achieve power. The disenfranchised of Haiti and Cuba and Bosnia and Somalia yearn for it. People of all races and cultures, women and men, protest to be given power. "Power to the people" was a rallying cry a generation ago. "Power to me" was the ego's response in the 1980s. But so much of mankind has not discovered the real power because it has been sought in the wrong place and in the wrong way. There is just one power— God. The source of power can actually be found nowhere else. The power of God is omnipotent—all potent, infinite, abundant. And God naturally bestows power on man because, as the Bible teaches, man is God's reflection. This power never promotes any purpose that is egocentric, selfish, dominating, or dictatorial. Rather it is all-embracing, selfless, compassionate, healing.

It is this power that Mrs. Eddy writes of in the "Dedicatory Sermon" delivered on January 6, 1895, in The Mother Church. "Who lives in good," Mrs. Eddy declared, "lives also in God,— lives in all Life, through all space. His is an individual kingdom, his diadem a crown of crowns. His existence is deathless, forever unfolding its eternal Principle. Wait patiently on illimitable Love, the lord and giver of Life. Reflect this Life, and with it cometh the full power of being. 'They shall be abundantly satisfied with the fatness of Thy house'" (Pulpit and Press, p. 4).

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