'To Bless All Mankind' May 21, 2018 Issue

Toward consistent cooperation

Elizabeth Mata

Adapted from an article published in The Christian Science Monitor, January 18, 2018.

The Christian Science Monitor editorial on the facing page points to an inspiring example of how people can come together in a spirit of unity to improve the world we live in.

Contrastingly, we all know that sinking feeling when collaboration with others is difficult or missing entirely. So how can we find cooperation that isn’t fleeting—a cooperation we can really trust?

At one point, I had a distressful situation with a co-worker over a period of months. We were not working well together, and our work demanded that we cooperate! It has long been my inclination to turn to God in prayer when problems arise, so that’s what I did. As I prayed one day, my thought was lifted to a different view of my identity as spiritual, indeed wholly spiritual, reflecting God’s goodness. In this unclouded view of myself I saw that I could never be in conflict with God, divine Love, or with any of Love’s children. The Bible teaches that we are all God’s children, and that had to include my colleague. Human opinions, personality traits, and personal likes or dislikes could no more be put into my true identity or theirs than darkness can be put into light. I saw clearly that both my colleague and I were under Love’s government, and therefore harmony between us was natural.

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Toward consistent cooperation

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