Spirit animates your life
For the lesson titled "Spirit" from January 30-February 5, 2012
This Lesson makes the important distinction that only the Spirit of God, good, has reality, power, and influence, while evil doesn’t. Science and Health teaches that “there are evil beliefs, often called evil spirits; but these evils are not Spirit, for there is no evil in Spirit” (Mary Baker Eddy, p. 206, cit. 18).
Filled with this Spirit, Jesus Christ was anointed by God to “preach good tidings unto the meek; . . . to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives” (Responsive Reading, Isaiah 61:1). Jesus’ healing of the woman who “had a spirit of infirmity eighteen years” (Luke 13:11, cit. 18) was just one example of many where he healed the sick through the power of Spirit.
Science and Health describes “the three great verities of Spirit” as “omnipotence, omnipresence, omniscience—Spirit possessing all power, filling all space, constituting all Science” (p. 109, cit. 3). Through his radical spiritual understanding of the allness of Spirit, Jesus was enabled to heal those who called upon him for healing. And it was that same radical understanding that enabled him to overcome death in his own experience.
We, too, can rely on Spirit to carry out our unique God-given missions for good in the world.
Samuel, the Old Testament prophet, was also receptive to Spirit. Spiritually discerning that David was God’s choice as king of Israel, Samuel anointed him as king, “the spirit of the Lord [coming] upon David from that day forward” (I Samuel 16:13, cit. 9). Soon after being anointed, David volunteered to fight Goliath, confident that God would deliver him “out of the hand of this Philistine” (I Samuel 17:37, cit. 10).
Over a thousand years later, Paul would declare that “my speech and my preaching was not with enticing words of man’s wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power” (I Corinthians 2:4, cit. 24). From the account of Paul’s life as a preacher, healer, and church builder in the book of Acts, we know of his dependence on the presence and power of Spirit to give him the strength he needed to fulfill his divine mission. During four journeys—arduous and perilous journeys, which by some estimates covered more than 9,000 miles over a 35 year period—Paul encountered slander, persecution, stoning, shipwreck, and imprisonment—none of which stopped him from fulfilling his mission.
In her chapter titled “Christian Science Practice,” Mary Baker Eddy cites the example of her contemporary, Florence Nightingale (1820–1910). Known for her fearlessness and tirelessness in caring for British soldiers in the Crimean war during epidemics, Nightingale always believed that she had been called by God to be a nurse. Eddy mentions her and others like her “engaged in humane labors” who endured “fatigues and exposures which ordinary people could not endure.” Eddy attributes such endurance to “the support which they derived from the divine law, rising above the human” (Science and Health, p. 385, cit. 25). She herself experienced this support by relying on the power of Spirit to overcome the challenges she encountered while fulfilling her God-ordained mission.
Like these individuals, we, too, can rely on Spirit to carry out our unique God-given missions for good in the world.
