In the Christian Science Bible Lesson November 11, 2013 Issue

We're 'children of light' — now!

For the Lesson titled “Mortals and Immortals” from November 11 - 17, 2013

Mary Trammell

Sometimes our lives seem more dark than light, with international conflict, illnesses, and family turmoil hanging over us like heavy clouds. That’s the way the Christians in Thessalonica must have felt some 20 years after Christ Jesus’ ascension. When would the Master come to save them? they wondered. So the Apostle Paul sent them the wake-up call quoted in the Golden Text for this week’s Lesson, titled “Mortals and Immortals”: “Ye are all the children of light, and the children of the day: we are not of the night, nor of darkness” (I Thessalonians 5:5). We have nothing to fear, he tells them, since we all live—right now—in the glorious light of the gospel, which extinguishes forever the darkness of unbelief in God.

It was Jesus’ incomparable life that brought this “light into the world,” as he explains during his journey into Jerusalem before the crucifixion (see Responsive Reading, John chapter 12). As he travels from Bethany (where he’d previously raised Lazarus from the dead), some of his fellow Israelites worship him. Some say they don’t believe in him. And some visiting Greeks persistently press to meet him, a sign that Jesus’ impending crucifixion and resurrection will bring light and “life everlasting” even to the non-Jewish Gentiles.

So what if darkness threatens us as children of light? Section 1 addresses that question from John’s Gospel, explaining that God’s “Word”—the creator of all life and light—is unconquerable: “And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not” (John 1:1, 3–5, citation 1). Or, from the Common English Bible: “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness doesn’t extinguish the light.” Instead, it’s the mortal “counterfeit” creation that gets extinguished, as Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures clarifies: “The real man is spiritual and immortal, but the mortal and imperfect so-called ‘children of men’ are counterfeits from the beginning, to be laid aside for the pure reality” (Mary Baker Eddy, p. 409, cit. 4).

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About the author

Christian Science practitioner and teacher Mary Trammell earned her MA and PhD in English Literature and Bible history, and coauthored The Reforming Power of the Scriptures.

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