IN THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE BIBLE LESSON October 19, 2009 Issue

WALK WITH GOD IN 'PATHS OF RIGHTEOUSNESS'

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VIRGINIA STOPFEL

"PROBATION AFTER DEATH," the title of this week's Christian Science Bible Lesson, might set some readers to thinking and questioning: Why probation? and, Why after death?

As i see it, probation suggests a test of character. It implies a need for personal scrutiny of every aspect of our life-experience, including our choices along the way, our motives and actions. Life doesn't end with the human experience of death; at some point our faults and shortcomings have to be faced and corrected.

But this week's Golden Text comforts us with the thought that we are not alone in this task: "The steps of a good man are ordered by the Lord" (Ps. 37:23). Here, steps can mean the way we live our lives. And the well-known Psalm 23, featured in the Responsive Reading that follows the Golden Text, elaborates on this. In realistic, profound examples, the provision God makes for His children is detailed—likening it to the care a faithful shepherd gives to his sheep. The psalm rings with conviction that God is providing everything essential to our well-being, never leaving us on our own.