Some people tend to think of church duties as a necessary burden to be shouldered. They may view the member who, because of other demands, cannot attend meetings or take on maintenance tasks as fortunate.

But is church activity really a burden? No, and it will never again seem to be if we identify and eradicate the suggestions causing us to avoid this hallowed work. Church duties demand continuing spiritual discipline, which when followed governs not only the church work but also our personal lives, bringing increased dominion and order.

With so much freedom to gain, do we really want to listen to the most blaring argument against doing church work: "I don't have time"? This suggestion of mortal thinking, posing as our own thought, would try to convince us that every waking moment must be devoted to the struggle for survival or we will lose our job, home, health, or whatever else we value. The truth of the matter is that man has already inherited infinite—and permanent—intelligence, wisdom, ability, and substance as the child of God. When we understand that man is the active expression of divine Spirit and not a valiant personal doer, our daily experiences will unfold with less effort and more joy.

The details of both career and church activity provide opportunities to obey God's will and so bring the divine law of good into action. This adjusts the human timing and balance of things so that we do have sufficient time for every necessary commitment.

I can remember an occasion when I spent a few hours in a Christian Science Reading Room, prayerfully working on a branch church problem of supply. In the weeks that followed I began to have an abundance of new ideas for my job, which had far-reaching effects on my career.

A variation of the argument that church work interferes with a successful and happy life is the thought that Christian Science is a vital, humanitarian cause with not enough members available to carry it out. Instead of feeling burdened by the work, we can see that its fulfillment is the direct and inevitable result of the operation of spiritual law. Then, whether we are many or few, we will feel the support and immediacy of this law as we carry out our duties.

The material laws that would condemn the conscientious church worker to an unnecessary feeling of burden cannot stand up to the power of all-acting, intelligent Mind, understood. This Mind does not know exhaustion, and therefore God's reflection, man, cannot experience it. Mrs. Eddy writes in Science and Health: "It is proverbial that Florence Nightingale and other philanthropists engaged in humane labors have been able to undergo without sinking fatigues and exposures which ordinary people could not endure. The explanation lies in the support which they derived from the divine law, rising above the human. The spiritual demand, quelling the material, supplies energy and endurance surpassing all other aids, and forestalls the penalty which our beliefs would attach to our best deeds." ^{Science and Health, p. 385.}

These words not only are an explanation of past accomplishments but can also be seen as a promise that our own consecration to church work will be blessed.

Recently my schedule of activities included duties as church organist, household and family obligations, and a part-time job. I was also in the early months of pregnancy with our second child. On top of that I was put in charge of a major portion of our branch church's project of opening a Reading Room in a public shopping center.

I soon learned that the more time I spent in prayer, the less time and effort were necessary to resolve problems of indecision and delay regarding the new Reading Room. Each time I specifically studied the current Lesson-Sermon ^{In the Christian Science Quarterly .} to understand more of our church's spiritual structure and purpose, another part of the project would suddenly fall into place.

All that work and prayer sustained and invigorated me. I rarely needed to nap and never missed a day at work. I felt compelled, impelled, and supported more completely than I ever had before. A severe earache our little girl had, and also great discomfort from a wisdom tooth, were healed in just a few hours' time through my own application of Christian Science. And after years of struggling to overcome fear, I now felt more at ease performing my duties as organist.

All those arguments that time is limited and that church work should come at the bottom of the list must be specifically cast out by a deepening understanding of what we are doing the church work for. If we see our membership and duties as nothing beyond congenial camaraderie among like-minded individuals, the deep conviction and purpose necessary to uplift the human race and carry forward the Cause of Christian Science in this age are missing.

In Science and Health we read: "...the mission of Christian Science now, as in the time of its earlier demonstration, is not primarily one of physical healing. Now, as then, signs and wonders are wrought in the metaphysical healing of physical disease; but these signs are only to demonstrate its divine origin,—to attest the reality of the higher mission of the Christ-power to take away the sins of the world." ^{Science and Health, p. 150.}

Our commitment to church, then, is our commitment to the world's release from its tangled dreams of sin, disease, and death. And our church's progress is in proportion to each step of our individual ascension above all phases of mortality.

This steadfast commitment, however, is just what mortal mind, error, with all its beliefs and laws of material living, does not want us to have, because spiritual understanding annihilates false belief.

Sometimes the resistance of mortal mind comes in the form of serious and even shattering personal experiences that accompany our devoted performance of church work. Then it is comforting to realize more completely our at-one-ment with the Father, Love, as His offspring. We are untouched and undisturbed as we acknowledge and perceive our spiritual selfhood in Christ as our true being. No matter what challenge the carnal mind sets before us, it can never interfere with our utter safety as the immortal image and likeness of God. Science and Health states, "The atonement is a hard problem in theology, but its scientific explanation is, that suffering is an error of sinful sense which Truth destroys, and that eventually both sin and suffering will fall at the feet of everlasting Love." ^{Ibid., p. 23.}

Remembering that everyone is in truth inseparable from God and the operation of divine law will also prevent us from fearing that individuals in or out of church will persecute or criticize us in our labors for mankind. Seeing God's creation, or an individual in it, as less than wholly good is inconsistent with Christian Science, which teaches that man is spiritual, governed entirely by the divine Principle, Love. We can rejoice in persecution because we know that suffering is unreal and that any evidence of malice is simply not the true picture of man. Paul wrote to the Corinthians, "I take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, in necessities, in persecutions, in distresses for Christ's sake: for when I am weak, then am I strong." ^{II Cor. 12:10.}

Each of us has special value and usefulness in branch church activity. When we are supporting what supports us, we are in obedience to and in harmony with the divine will, God's perfect plan. We can expect the biblical visions of peace and abundant good to appear more and more in our own experience as evidence of the reality of our being. The opportunity to serve God is as available as God Himself, and the benefits for ourselves and mankind are everlasting.