IN THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE BIBLE LESSON February 8, 2010 Issue

A SONG OF PRAISE

VIRGINIA STOPFEL

HOW APPROPRIATE to begin this Christian Science Bible Lesson, titled "Soul," with a song of thanksgiving and praise to God, who is Soul, for His saving deeds among us all. The citations from Psalms in the Responsive Reading catch the Biblical sense of man's relation to Soul: God holds our identity and every aspect of our life in His grasp. This sense of oneness of being—what we are and how we live—runs through this Lesson.

Section I takes us straight to a central point: "Soul is synonymous with Spirit, God, the creative, governing, infinite Principle outside of finite form, which forms only reflect" (Science and Health, p. 71, citation 4). This, together with the assurance that "God expresses in man the infinite idea forever developing itself, broadening and rising higher and higher from a boundless basis" (p. 258, cit. 5), resonates with the Hebraic view of Soul as a way to be, not something to have.

The Apostle Paul's letter to the Christians in Corinth warns us that although we experience—are "baptized" in—Soul's providential care, that, in itself, will not make us love God (see I Cor. 10:1-7). With complete trust, we must turn to God. The prophet Jeremiah movingly describes this relationship with God, Soul, when he cites God as saying, "I will rejoice over them to do them good, . . . with my whole heart and with my whole soul. . . . and their soul shall be as a watered garden; and they shall not sorrow any more at all" (Jer. 32:28-41, 31:12, cits. 7, 8).