What do washing dishes, a construction worker, and the Saviour of the world have in common?

It's almost an affront when the question is asked this way. But when we only look at outward appearances we can miss everything that matters. We need to regard life deeply, looking further than outward appearances. And when we do, things that were previously invisible will come into view.

Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy looks at life from a profound moral and spiritual perspective. The book investigates the spiritual nature of health, healing, living, and humanity. As a result, everything about life can eventually lead to God, divine Life.

At one point the book speaks about taking up ontology, "'the science of real being.'" "We must look deep into realism," it says, "instead of accepting only the outward sense of things." ^{Science and Health, p. 129.}

So, what do washing dishes, a construction worker, and the Saviour of the world have in common? In some cases, they can have a great deal in common. The person who was washing dishes is a mother with children. She said that when her children were young and she a relatively new student of Christian Science, one of the few times she could really be quiet and turn her thought wholly to God in uninterrupted prayer was while she was washing dishes. Nobody came near her then! somewhat ironically, dishwashing became a special time in her life. And later when she began to help others outside the home circle through her healing practice of Christian Science, household duties remained periods of continued prayer for many.

The construction worker was a fellow who found Christian Science while he was still working his way through school. The more he studied Science and came to see something of the practical, healing significance of man's relationship to God, the more he wanted to commit his life to Christian healing. The hours spent in manual labor became hours spent pondering passages from the Bible and Science and Health that he had read before coming to work—and often during lunch breaks. Eventually he devoted himself to Christian Science healing.

The "Saviour of the world" part of the question, of course, is the most central. In the case of the first two people, Christ Jesus' life, combined with the teachings of Christian Science, was at the center of their prayer and study. But to outward appearances for these two people there were years of quiet labor, often just plain drudgery, and wondering where it would lead. A merely human, material outlook on life loses sight of the deep, divine reality that can underlie even the most ordinary activities.

Material-mindedness will never grasp the most significant events or understand what really moves the mind and heart of spiritually progressive men or women. Where others might see pitiful, diseased, downtrodden men and women, the Master saw something worth saving and healing.

Jesus' disciples wanted to turn away a woman who had a daughter who was "grievously" ill. But she persisted in asking Jesus for mercy, and he gave it. Where the disciples saw someone of little value, Jesus, after talking with her, said, "O woman, great is thy faith: be it unto thee even as thou wilt." ^{Matt. 15:28.} Her daughter was healed within the hour.

The world gets things backward just as those disciples did. And it takes courage and spiritual-mindedness to break out of this backwardness. But once we begin to see what is real and Godlike, we find our lives revitalized, and our love for others becomes a spiritual liberation. Without such liberation, we'll become mired down in a world of materialism that would reduce everyday life to the spiritual malaise of a thirty-minute situation comedy—or tragedy.

This contradiction between the divinely compelling and the materially dull—or even worse, despised—needs to be understood. Think about the Master, especially in his experience on the cross. Spiritually, this was the most profound demonstration of the power of divine Love to redeem and save humanity. Yet, from an outward sense of things, Jesus was reduced to the status and treatment of a criminal! And as for those who hated him and opposed his spirituality and the promises and demands that such spirituality brings to human life, that's just where they wanted him.

For the Master, the mother, and the worker, understanding the spiritual promise and reality that are alive in man makes a connection, an all-important connection. We, too, can look deeply into realism and rediscover the spirituality that gives life to everything because God is the creator of man.

This spiritual nature, or reality, is what we are. Even Jesus, who was taken for a rebel, a thief, and someone to be brutally sacrificed, wasn't seen for what he was. But what, or who, he really was, was what prevailed.

We can look deeply into the meaning of his life and learn more of the spiritual affection, hope, and courage that must come to lie at the center of our own lives. We can become ontologists, no longer simply accepting the material, outward sense of things. Man is the image of God, and to understand something of what this means is to enter into a calling—to be a servant of God. This service will change things and eventually give worth and purpose to every aspect of our lives.

Michael D. Rissler