Look Up!

MARJORIE C. MULOCK

To one taking a walk in the country in the early spring, how drab and dull the way may seem if the gaze is directed downwards! He may see a muddy road, littered with broken branches and withered leaves, fields colorless and lifeless, the grass bent and downtrodden, and perhaps in the lea of a bank a pile of melting snow. But let him look up, and what a glorious sight meets the eye—the loveliness of it all—trees veiled in cloudy green, buds swelling into leaf, birds darting through the clear air, the tender blue of the sky, and, bathing all with beauty and warmth, the golden sunshine!

Which way are we looking as we travel along the road of human life? Up, or down? If thought is fixed on matter, on self, or on any of the myriad forms of error, the outlook may indeed seem dreary and desolate, difficult and discouraging. It is not really an outlook, but an inward look—eyes clouded and dimmed by a false sense of self. Christ Jesus, the great Way-shower, even when he was foretelling the destruction of Jerusalem, said to his followers, "Then look up, and lift your heads; for your redemption draweth nigh."

Perhaps a claim of sickness seems so real to us that it is all we see; it fills our mental horizon with its suggestions of fear, pain, and gloom. Christian Science teaches us at such a time to look up, to lift our thoughts to a higher sense of creation, to the contemplation of something better, truer, more spiritual; for instance, to gratitude for God's goodness and the remembrance of His love; to the realization of perfect God and His perfect creation. As this course is persisted in, and we steadily look up to behold the goodness of God and man in His image and likeness, we find the golden sunshine of His presence, the tenderness and beauty of His love, changing the dreary prospect to one of harmony and peace.

Sickness seems real only to material sense. To spiritual sense health and holiness are real and ever present. God bestows health, purity, and all right activity on His beloved children, and His good gifts cannot be changed or taken from us. We must look up and claim our perfection as the children of God, included in His perfect creation. In "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, has written thus of man (p. 258): "God expresses in man the infinite idea forever developing itself, broadening and rising higher and higher from a boundless basis."

Is it a claim of sin in oneself or another that would make the way seem dark and dreary? Look up! Could the infinitely good Father create an imperfect and sinful son? Could evil blot out the omnipresence of good? No! Man is the loved of the Father. He reflects the divine nature, and can never be separated from the love of God. Looking up and seeing man as God's image and likeness, reflecting constantly and continuously His purity and goodness, will change our outlook, let in the light of Truth, and reveal our true identity.

Or is it sorrow that would blind us to the beauty of Life? Are we gazing down into a grave which, in our darkness, we feel holds all that is dear, and our happiness as well? Mary was looking down into the tomb for Jesus, her eyes blinded with tears, when his tender call, "Mary," caused her to look up and she beheld the risen Christ. To heal the feelings of separation, loneliness, and self-pity, we must look up, for God is Love and will comfort us. As our Leader so truly tells us (ibid., p. 266), "This seeming vacuum is already filled with divine Love."

Let us always look up to God, for this will turn sorrow into joy, sickness into health, a sense of loss and separation into the spiritual understanding of the Life which is God, and which knows no death. As we look up and behold the ever-present harmony, beauty, and goodness of our Father, the dark suggestions of material sense will fade out of our consciousness. Our Leader says (ibid., p. 261): "Fixing your gaze on the realities supernal, you will rise to the spiritual consciousness of being, even as the bird which has burst from the egg and preens its wings for a skyward flight."

Does this seem a hard task? The study of the Bible in the light of Christian Science teaches us how to spiritualize our thinking. It gives us a better understanding of the words and works of Jesus, and enables us to follow in the way he marked out for us—the way of overcoming sickness, sin, and death.

Even Jesus' chosen disciples had been dull and doubting, but how changed they were after his resurrection! They too had learned to look up, and through his demonstration of eternal life they saw the risen Christ, and thereafter better understood the power, dominion, and glory bestowed upon the real man.

As our thought is lifted we behold God as Life, Truth, and Love, and man as the son of God. We find God's kingdom here and now, a spiritual kingdom, where Love reigns and is All, where the beauty of holiness is eternal, and where the Father and son are one in being. Therefore, "Look up, ... for your redemption draweth nigh."

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