Too many demands?

There are many pressures on us today—on our time, our finances, our affections, and so on. They come from so many directions that it can be difficult to keep up with, evaluate, or see how to meet them. To discover more blessing and feel less stress, we need to have our thinking free and clear and, especially, anchored in God—the one Mind, divine Love.

In an address at the 1899 annual meeting of her Church, Mary Baker Eddy noted that “. . . the fulfilment of divine Love in our lives is the demand of this hour — the special demand” (The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany, pp. 131–132). Prayer for the fulfillment of Love is far more than a petition or aspiration. This prayer calls on us to put off a mortal, earthly view of ourselves and others, enabling us to see our true, Godlike identity. 

At one point when the requirements on my time felt chronically overwhelming—I was a young mother and a graduate student with two part-time jobs to help make ends meet—I found myself making a lot of to-do lists. Then, as I was praying one day, I wrote the word Love in capital letters at the top of each list. This became my primary goal, and the result was that whatever got accomplished came without stress. I found that, rather than feeling at the mercy of the tasks needing to be done, I felt free and unencumbered, no matter how much or how little was achieved. I felt the practicality and power of this statement: “True prayer is not asking God for love; it is learning to love, and to include all mankind in one affection” (Mary Baker Eddy, No and Yes, p. 39).