To many today the key question for normal, healthy living appears to be one of how to cope with stress. Whether this is humanly true or not, we need to be free from believing that existence is material and therefore subject to such threats.

Nothing needs to happen in overcoming stress, except the acquisition of increased spiritual understanding. Christian Science is the spiritually scientific Christ method applicable to daily living. It points out that, as God's image, man dwells in His infinite presence, forever reflecting the Father's power. Man is not made of, confined in, or compressed by matter, but he exists as divine Love's boundless expression. Everything needful for harmonious life and perfect happiness exists for man in Mind, now and forever. The infinity of God is natural, inevitable, and always here. Being is immediate presence; there is no time or space between divine Being and its manifestation. All man has to do is to be. He does not have to strive to be. To understand this frees us from believing in stress and strain.

Our Exemplar is Christ Jesus. He healed the sick, cleansed the leper, restored sight to the blind, even raised the dead. In spite of tremendous demands made upon him, he was able to say, "My yoke is easy, and my burden is light." ^{Matt. 11:30;} What was his secret? When you study the Master's life, you find the source of his energy was not a secret. He revealed it when he said, "The Father that dwelleth in me, he doeth the works." ^{John 14:10;} Jesus was constantly aware of God as Father. God is ever expressing Himself through spiritual man. On this simple truth we can build a worthwhile life without accompanying stress.

Jesus actively manifested God's qualities. These Godlike qualities, such as meekness and spiritual love, are expressed without pressure as the evidence of the action of the Christ, or Truth, in human consciousness. This manifesting in our lives unfolds efficacious Love to us without tension, labor, or mortal mind pressure. It is the very essence of our being, expressed. The Master, in his inseparability from the Christ, rose above a false sense of responsibility, self-concern, pride of accomplishment, or permanent fear of failure.

Seeing ourselves in difficulties or as having no possibility of getting out of our predicaments is basically a belief in limitation—limited time or ability, or lack of capacity to cope with confrontations. Stress preys upon fear, self-pity, resentment, self-condemnation. Couple stress with anxiety and uncontrollable emotion, and the consequence is often not only tense, stressful living but also physical disease. We need to correct these liabilities with spiritual truths.

Spiritual man made in God's image is the reality of our being, reflecting His goodness infinitely, eternally. We have our being in the calm and peace of the Father's omnipresence. We are ever amenable to His tender care. We perform our individual activities according to divine Love's directing and beneficence. There is no deprivation, depletion, or destitution for Love's man. He is ever at one with opportunity, achievement, and success.

There is rightful purpose for every idea of divine Mind, including the compound idea, man. Our purpose in human experience is to learn how to express this Mind. If our work seems disagreeable, unpleasant, and unsuited to our talents, any change necessary must come through changing our thinking. We must see our true work as activity that glorifies God and serves His creation. Such understanding opens avenues in human experience for better and higher service. It expands our thinking and lifts us out of any sense of drudgery. We are raised to the level of our spiritual thinking.

We have a right to be successful in whatever God leads us to do. We would encumber our progress if we allowed dishonesty, distrust, sharp practices, greed, and envy to cloud our thinking. Building our career on Love-derived qualities of wisdom, goodness, gratitude, honesty, justice, and mercy, we need have no worries about failing. No child of God is a failure. But genuine success is not to be measured by material power, position, or wealth. Mrs. Eddy points out what must be done. She says, speaking of the spirit of Truth that cleanses from all sin: "By purifying human thought, this state of mind permeates with increased harmony all the minutiæ of human affairs. It brings with it wonderful foresight, wisdom, and power; it unselfs the mortal purpose, gives steadiness to resolve, and success to endeavor." ^{Miscellaneous Writings, p. 204;}

Belief in strain is belief in struggle—struggling to make a marriage go, straining to get ahead, worrying over competition, working at a job we don't like. But where is all this happening? We falsely believe it to be happening "out there." We believe it to be a situation we can't cope with, a circumstance beyond our ability to handle. But Mrs. Eddy tells us: "Everything is as real as you make it, and no more so. What you see, hear, feel, is a mode of consciousness, and can have no other reality than the sense you entertain of it." ^{Unity of Good, p. 8;}

This claim of stress, strain, pressure, is in mortal thought and can have no more effect on our lives than we allow it to have. How we think determines how we live. In reality there is only one Mind, which is divine, and which includes all consciousness. In divine Mind there is no stress to cope with, no strain going on, no pressure to overcome. All that is happening is the unencumbered, unrestricted, unobstructed unfoldment of Mind, expressed everywhere in Mind's universe without exception.

We need to strive to see ourselves as we really are: the complete, perfect, wholly satisfied offspring of God. We must refuse to see ourselves as mortals, straining and struggling to get out of human predicaments.

Peace and tranquillity are infinite, and eternally ours. Divine Love, the omnipotent, omnipresent source of being, is their source and substance. Therefore peace and tranquillity, in truth, are as permanent as divine Love. They come and go only in belief. This is absolute truth, from the standpoint of which we can successfully overcome all beliefs of stress and strain. "Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on thee: because he trusteth in thee." ^{Isa. 26:3.}