In the Christian Science Bible Lesson May 20, 2013 Issue

God's building

For the Lesson titled "Soul and Body" from May 20 - 26, 2013

Kathleen Collins

“Sometime we shall learn how Spirit, the great architect, has created men and women in Science.” This promise from Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy (p. 68, citation 9) provides a springboard for this week’s Bible Lesson titled “Soul and Body.” It invites us to dive in and explore the metaphor of God, Soul, as builder and architect, and man as His creation, whose true body is “a building of God, an house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens” (II Corinthians 5:1, cit. 8).

Great architecture expresses beauty, harmony, strength, and integrity—all qualities of Soul. Proverbs adds, “Through wisdom is an house builded; and by understanding it is established” (24:3, cit. 15). Other spiritual “building supplies” include righteousness, health, and individuality.

Buildings also have form. Though often meaning physical shape, the words form and formation can have a more spiritual connotation—“to develop in the mind; conceive” and “the essence of something” (thefreedictionary.com). For example, identity is defined as “the reflection in multifarious forms of the living Principle, Love” (Science and Health, p. 477, cit. 1).