ONE OF MY FAVORITE HYMNS in the Christian Science Hymnal starts with the praise "O Life that maketh all things new" (No. 218). Who hasn't at some time or another yearned for the makeover of a rocky relationship, a sick body, depressed thinking, an empty bank account? Who doesn't want to see fresh answers emerging to global problems such as world hunger, terrorism, and war?

Technology, in particular, tends to illustrate a societal yearning for constant improvement and change. Technological newness is all around us. And I, for one, am sincerely grateful for this innovation. In fact, as I write this, I'm sitting on an airplane typing this article on a mini-laptop, having just made a couple of calls on a "smart phone" that also browses the Internet and captures video. I use this technology productively (most of the time!), and on my frequent travels it gives me access to constantly updated news and information, while allowing me to be accessible to others wherever I am.

But I'm even more grateful for something else I have with me everywhere I go, something that has accompanied travelers along their way in all eras, which never needs a new "product launch." Something that can change and become new at any moment—my thoughts.

Whether we're at home or on the move, our thinking can range from the mundane to the inspired. From the prosaic to the profoundly prayerful. From the material to the spiritual. Just like new technology, it can be employed for better or worse purposes. But it's capable of both gradual and instantaneous change.

As a very small girl Mary Baker (later Mary Baker Eddy, author of Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures), remarked to her cousin, "Oh, I wish I could cut my thinker off!" (Robert Peel, Mary Baker Eddy: The Years of Discovery, p.15). Many of us can probably relate to that. Thinking can be like a train constantly on the move. But a train can go round and round in circles at the base of a mountain, or it can take the track that scales the heights to the summit. Both involve movement, and yet one is progressive while the other only seems to be. I've found that the most productive thinking is neither stuck in a material past nor fascinated by a material future. Rather, it reaches for the consciousness of the spiritual ever-present, by which the past can be redeemed and the future better aligned to God's blueprint of expansive good for all.

Isn't that what God, through Isaiah, said? "I will do a new thing" (43:19). Isn't that what God was promising? A new, more spiritual, way of thinking? Isaiah was talking about the emergence of a consciousness that would change lives for the better.

Even in the case of technological innovation, the underlying substance of every new thing is a thought, since the essence of every innovative process is an idea. So it is with needed life-changes. The substance of all progress and healing—individually and collectively—is a new sense of God, Spirit, which leads to adjustment and refinement of the human condition for the better.

No one exemplified this more than Jesus. You could think of the master Christian as a spiritual innovator. Jesus brought to light and implemented an astoundingly "new thing": a divine Love that heals, a God who is always good, a divine Truth that sets men, women, and children free from sickness, sin, and death. Jesus' radical life of listening to God, hearing and obeying the divine direction, and sharing it, changed individuals for the better physically, mentally, morally, emotionally.

And his example did more than that. It impelled his disciples to forsake their familiar ways for a new way of life. Fishermen left their nets. A tax collector renounced his more dubious practices. Women began to shake off a limited sense of being silent citizens. These were but the outward evidences of inner transformation. The promise that God would later make through John the Revelator, "Behold, I make all things new" (Rev. 21:5), was radically evident in the effects of the healing love that Jesus expressed.

The "I" in Isaiah's promise "I will do a new thing"—the divine "I", God—impelled, propelled, and compelled the Savior's wholly original practice. Jesus wasn't into new for new's sake. He did have a heart open to the eternal Truth that is God and proved that the invariable outcome of a God-discerning and God-demonstrating heart is progress that adjusts the comfortable (and uncomfortable!) familiar from a more material to a more spiritual framework.

People's worlds were revitalized by Jesus' vision and its impact. Newness of thought spread through minds, renewed bodies, and restored relationships. This revolutionary point of view challenged institutions as well as individuals to review their habits and open the door to fresh approaches. Everything could be seen in a different light—spiritually. Everything could be done in a different way—with healing love.

Newness, then, was not a chronological happening in the presence of the Savior. It was not the result of a particular time of year or of a particular time of life. A spiritual awareness and practical newness were an inevitable outcome of the truth Jesus preached concerning God and man, revealed in the Savior's healing life. Today, too, this truth silences voices that whisper "same old, same old" into world-weary hearts.

In Young's Literal Translation of the Bible, that promise from Isaiah actually reads, "Lo, I am doing a new thing" (43:19). This suggests that to be created by Deity is to be created anew, moment by moment. That applies to each one, at every moment, as we actually are. And it includes every single one and everything we care for.

A friend of mine once said spontaneously, as we were studying spiritual ideas from the Bible and Science and Health together, "We're getting newer every day!" What my friend meant was not that material bodies somehow get newer every day or that the human mind goes from senior to junior, like the fictional character in 2008's movie The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. Rather, in the light of the spiritual idea of eternity, my friend had glimpsed that every day in which thought yields even a little to the timeless reality of God's relationship to man, we are more clearly grasping the eternal newness that God is always bestowing on all.

Newness is inherent in us. It is an intrinsic part of who we each always are as the children of God. And through the Christ, which unveils in our human hearts this truth, we can discern that whatever our age, whatever our circumstances, we can welcome in new ideas, embracing a new direction in our lives. We can experience newness in our relationships and renewal of our physical and institutional bodies. Newness is not an abstract spiritual concept. It is a demonstrable divine fact of individual and collective being.

If, instead, a heavy sense of time seems to hang over our thoughts and experiences, that isn't Truth talking. It is a whispering liar, an aspect of what the Bible calls "the carnal mind," presenting itself as our own thoughts. That is, it misrepresents us as limited and finite, and would have us oppose our own best interests by persuading us to consent to the existence of a mentality that counterfeits the one Mind. The arguments this carnal mind makes to preserve the false sense of its own existence need to be recognized, faced and denied.

At times the carnal mind's claims to reverse the Revelator's promise, and make everything seem old—or to make us think we want everything to remain just as we are used to—has to be vigorously confronted. As Mary Baker Eddy once put it, "The human heart, like a feather bed, needs often to be stirred, sometimes roughly, and given a variety of turns, else it grows hard and uncomfortable whereon to repose" (Miscellaneous Writings 1883–1896, pp. 127–128).

When someone is struggling with sickness, or unyielding character traits, the heart yearns for a newness of mind and body that seems to be a very physical need. Yet the primary need is always to align consciousness with the always new message of the Christ, to imbibe the "new thing" that God is doing. That will free us to open our hearts to right thinking and action, and it will heal.

What if your church appears to be stuck in the past or even rocketing too fast for your liking into the future? It might seem to be a case of disagreement with other people's actions and decisions. Again, the need is to reach out in prayer to perceive the "new thing" that God is doing. It's essential not to trust in the new as opposed to the old, or the old as opposed to the new, but rather to trust divine Mind to wisely bring light to both fresh and familiar thinking and actions. Thought that genuinely yearns to see a life or a loved cause move forward at Love's leading will recognize inspired innovations. Because divine Mind is never stereotyped, stagnant, staid, stalled, or stymied, that which reflects Mind can't be either!

The hymn mentioned earlier describes what God, or Life, makes new as "the blooming earth, the thoughts of men." God is giving us fresh inspiration at every moment, and all men and women are divinely primed to be meekly receptive to it. We are the vessels that God has created to welcome the inpouring of His angel ideas. Even if the carnal mind insists, "I can't change," we can freely receive thoughts always coming from God and be open to embracing Spirit's timely innovations. css