In the Christian Science Bible Lesson June 16, 2014 Issue

Ode to joy

For the Lesson titled “Is the Universe, Including Man, Evolved by Atomic Force?” from June 16 - 22, 2014

Christa Kreutz

Ralph Waldo Emerson once wrote that “nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.” This quote is applicable to many things, but I never before thought about it as applying to all creation until I read this week’s Christian Science Bible Lesson, “Is the Universe, Including Man, Evolved by Atomic Force?” It shows that the universe is the manifestation of infinite Spirit—which has got to include joy and enthusiasm! In fact, the word enthusiasm originally comes from the Greek entheos, or “God within.” That is appropriate, as we see from the passages in this Lesson that the universe most definitely includes qualities of divine joy.

One way to describe enthusiasm is to be passionately committed. Genesis 1 describes a God who is committed to creation, carefully designing the universe with balance and goodness. And after every step of creation in Genesis 1, we have the words, “and God saw that it was good” (see 1:12, citation 8).

Psalm 105 describes God’s commitment to creation: “He hath remembered his covenant for ever, the word which he commanded to a thousand generations” (verse 8, cit. 17). The stories of the covenants made with Noah, then Abraham, then Moses, and then David, was the Old Testament’s way of describing God as perpetually faithful and committed to God’s people.