Editorial December 29, 1962 Issue

A Time of Challenges

Helen Wood Bauman

As we enter the New Year, it is well to give special thought to the time in which we live. With its sudden changes and quickening pace of material development, we are challenged to increasing spiritual effort. There is danger in the more prosperous countries that the people will become apathetic through soft living. They do not have to struggle to survive as did their primitive forebears. Individually they are more secure than ever. On the other hand, collectively considered, they are less secure than ever, for they are confronted with material forces of vast dimension poised for destruction and with the possibility that these forces will be released by someone with political power but without moral sensibility.

The need to maintain spiritual alertness and the ability to pray effectively was never greater. The power of prayer is what needs to be developed. For today's dangers can be met only by the spiritual forces of love and intelligence, which prayer brings to light. Christian Scientists pray to become conscious of the omnipotence of God. Prayer not only awakens them to the presence of God and His intelligent control of all, but it stimulates them to increase their efforts to demonstrate the truths of divine Science that have dominion over evil.

Mary Baker Eddy says in her Message to The Mother Church for 1900 (p. 9), "The twentieth century in the ebb and flow of thought will challenge the thinkers, speakers, and workers to do their best."

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