The greatest gift
Will you help me?
I want to give the world a Christmas present. I know that might sound cheesy, but hear me out. Because my guess is you’ve felt it, too. You read a headline about something awful going on in your own city, or somewhere in your country, or halfway across the world, and you feel a tug, a yearning, to help. But what can you do? What can any of us do that will make a difference when all the problems seem so big?
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Which brings me to my idea of a Christmas present.
Healing starts with us.
I’ve been thinking about the Christ this Christmas season—the pure love Christ Jesus embodied that healed and saved the people he encountered. That saving love is the eternal Christ that’s still at work in our lives today, bringing healing to us just as it did to those in Bible times.
And that healing starts with us. I know, because as I was praying recently about how to help the world, Mary Baker Eddy’s “Daily Prayer” came to mind. It’s about letting divine Love, God, rule within us; and this line popped out at me: “rule out of me all sin” (Manual of The Mother Church, p. 41). The emphasis in that line when it came to thought was, “rule out of me all sin.”
It made me realize that helping the world starts with each of us as individuals, because as we deal with the things in our own thoughts that aren’t Godlike, we contribute to a lessening of evil in the world. As we put more faith in good, give more power to good, we see more of the realness and allness of good, God, in our own lives and in everyone else’s.
So let’s get really practical. How do we “rule out” those things that aren’t good?
First, take a look at your thoughts and conversations; they’ll tell you a lot. What are you focused on? Where are the places where you feel like something doesn’t quite fit, or there’s an uncomfortable rub—almost like a stone in your shoe? Those are the signs of something that needs to be “ruled out”—some darkness that gets to be eliminated by the light of Christ.
For me, that place of darkness was a creeping negativity I noticed over a period of several weeks. Moments of being more critical than I wanted to, or focusing on the negative aspects of a situation instead of on addressing and healing those negatives.
Let the light of Christ shine in your own dark places.
But I didn’t want to add negativity to the world, so after I recognized what was going on, I took another step to rule it out: I opened my heart to that Christ-light, or the reality of what God is, made manifest in our lives. I let that light shine in all my “dark places” by praying for God’s purity, holiness, grace, and love to permeate my thoughts and actions. As I did, the impulse to be negative lost its power over me and faded. Because of course, wherever light is, darkness simply can’t exist.
You, too, can allow that light of Christ to illuminate your life and, by extension, the world. Let it shine in your own dark places. Let it rule out gossip, envy, comparisons, and selfishness, and let it usher in love, hope, forgiveness, and peace. Let it become all to you and watch the healing that results.
This is the greatest gift you can give this Christmas season, and the world thanks you.