Sentinel Watch June 6, 2011 Issue

Living peace to end war

Patricia Hardee

Our daily conversations about world news go on as if there is such a place as “over there,” far away from “here” and essentially unconnected to where we are. We hear news reports of war and even threats of global war. Sometimes it seems there is nothing we, “over here,” can do about what is going on, way “over there.”

The only prayer Jesus gave his followers, the Lord’s Prayer, makes clear that heaven and earth are not two different places. “Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven,” was Jesus’ prayer of affirmation (Matt. 6:10). He was claiming that the divine harmony for everywhere “here” on earth is as present as it is everywhere “there” (in heaven). Or as Mary Baker Eddy put it in her interpretation of the Lord’s Prayer, “Enable us to know,—as in heaven, so on earth,—God is omnipotent, supreme” (Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 17).

When we think of God’s will as the one and only force, expressed as infinity, it follows that there is only one locality. There is no such place as “over there.” Here is the only locality, whether we call it heaven or earth, east or west, over here or over there. 