IN HIS NEW BOOK, Get a Life! It is all about you, Reggie McNeal of Leadership Network in Dallas—a nonprofit public charity that fosters church innovation and growth—says paying attention to our spiritual development, "including our relationship with the God who made us," pays big dividends. Among other things, he maintains, our relationship to God provides "the ultimate capacity to build bridges that let us off the island of self into the world beyond us."

The book recommends that readers consider five questions to help them live a life of greater focus and meaning:

• Why am I here?
• What is really important to me?
• What is my score card?
• What am I good at?
• What do I need to learn?

Mary Baker Eddy often posed similar questions in her writings, which bring focus and structure to people's thinking about spiritual development. Consider, for example, two questions in her book Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures: "Am I living the life that approaches the supreme good? Am I demonstrating the healing power of Truth and Love?" (p. 496).

These questions echo what she termed a "scientific response" to the ultimate question of existence: "What am I?" To that, she promised, earnest spiritual seekers would be able to answer, "I am able to impart truth, health, and happiness, and this is my rock of salvation and my reason of existing" (The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellanyp. 165).

We believe the answers to all of life's questions lie in a clear concept of God. Wherever we are, whatever we are doing, this concept governs our thoughts and determines our actions. We need to become aware of our unbroken unity with God, the source of all wisdom and understanding, the origin of all good and all life.

Jesus spoke of this link to God with increasing clarity during his ministry. And Christian Science reveals that through his teaching and example, Jesus demonstrated that each of us is really spiritual in nature. He consistently rejected as false the material concept of existence, and this enabled him to prove power of Truth and Love."

There was no ego related to Jesus' healing activity. No checking who was more deserving of help. No anguish over personal strengths and weaknesses. No score card. Just his burning desire to have others follow his example, and his promise that believers would accomplish even greater works than he did (see John 14:12).

What if our hearts are in such discipleship, but we don't quite meet the standard every day? What if we stumble sometimes, don't pray as much as we should, make mistakes? Well, anyone who is sincere and trusting can rest assured that God will never compel them to revisit past failures. You might say it's the process, not the outcome, that best glorifies Him. The desire for spiritual understanding is no mere intellectual pursuit, but a yearning for steady obedience to a God whose plan for us is always good. The Science of Christianity advances thinking beyond the scope of the human branches of learning and into God's unlimited and totally spiritual reality. It shows that those who truly live by faith are in touch with reality.

So, what's most important to learn? We'd suggest that it's to know, to accept, that we are all God's very expression. And to live our lives that way. "Man is tributary to God, Spirit, and to nothing else," wrote Mary Baker Eddy. "God's being is infinity, freedom, harmony, and boundless bliss" (Science and Health, p. 481). With sturdy backup from a vigilant, loving, forgiving Father-Mother, that state of existence is always within reach. We've already got a life. css