Article June 24, 1996 Issue

Spiritual fitness

Laura Matthews

Making sure we're "fit" commands much attention these days. Everyone wants to look and feel good, but most of the time, fitness is measured on a purely physical level. How do we ensure that our thought is "in shape"? We know we're spiritually fit if our lives are increasingly serving God. Flexing the mental muscles of unselfishness, dedication, selfimmolation, and purity develops our inherent spiritual strength and is actually more satisfying than physical exercise.

Training our thinking along spiritual lines, however, requires discipline—far more so than bench pressing more weight or running more miles. This training comes down to understanding, moment by moment, the "anatomy" of thought. Mary Baker Eddy writes in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures: "Anatomy, when conceived of spiritually, is mental self-knowledge, and consists in the dissection of thoughts to discover their quality, quantity, and origin. Are thoughts divine or human? That is the important question" (p. 462).

Testing each thought and asking if its source is divine or human takes effort and commitment. But it's also a pure joy. It leads to a new, God-inspired recognition of purpose and satisfaction.

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