Editorial May 1, 2017 Issue

Am I ready?

Allison W. Phinney

Those three simple words often precede unsettling questions. Am I ready for a special talk or presentation, for example. Or am I ready for a visit with unfriendly relatives, or being cross-questioned as a witness, or needing to help someone I see is in trouble. The difficulty may not lie so much with particular circumstances as with the fact that the question is narrowly focused on a personal sense of self. So, not surprisingly, the question “Am I ready?” is all too often answered, “Probably not!”

When the date for teaching my first Christian Science Primary class was set for July many years ago, I felt very far from ready. I felt I hadn’t had enough time to prepare. I’d been working full time each day at The Mother Church and at the same time was also writing a Christian Science lecture for delivery in the fall. I began class with only about the first three lessons in hand. And rapidly I calculated that I just wasn’t going to be able to prepare the rest of the lessons with only an afternoon and evening to work on each one beforehand.

As I’d begun working on the lessons, several things happened that left me with my thoughts in disarray and without the strong sense of inner conviction and divine guidance that was so familiar to me. It was a little like losing your sonar, radar, and satellite connections in mid-ocean—only worse, because I felt what I’d lost connection with was divine Truth, the very thing the class was all about! The result was it appeared I now lacked the thing most needed in order to teach. I began to think I might become known as the only teacher ever, who called a class together but couldn’t finish teaching!

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Bible Lens—May 1–7, 2017