In the Christian Science Bible Lesson March 17, 2014 Issue

Matter’s masks stripped away

For the Lesson titled “Matter” from March 17–23, 2014

Madelon Maupin

This Bible Lesson, titled “Matter,” shows how Christian Science reveals not only what is not substantial (matter), but also reveals what is: Spirit. Like a physicist committed to finding the building blocks of the universe, the student of Christian Science can explore this Lesson to understand the spiritual building blocks that make up reality. In the process one sees the healing practicality of this spiritual understanding.

Many thinkers, weary of material theories, yearn to understand the power and cause behind creation. Job symbolizes this spiritual quest, and in seeking answers from God, he is asked, perhaps as a parent would give a gentle reminder to an inquiring child: “Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth?” (Job 38:4, citation 2).

What is that “foundation”—which God would lay? The Deuteronomist not only knew the answer, but also the disastrous consequences of forgetting it, when he declared: “Of the Rock that begat thee thou art unmindful, and hast forgotten God that formed thee” (Deuteronomy 32:18, cit. 6). Or, as The New Living Translation (NLT) renders it: “You neglected the Rock who had fathered you;  you forgot the God who had given you birth.”