Deadlines . Checklists. How they seem to dominate our lives today. And how we seem to live for those moments when the work (or at least the workweek) is finished and we can enjoy a few hours of freedom from these things.

Do we have to live with this hectic pattern? Must we resign ourselves to drudgery, stress, and postponed fulfillment? Or is there a way out?

I unexpectedly came across a very useful answer to these questions when looking up the word complete. A dictionary offered these two thought-provoking definitions: "possessing all necessary parts, items, components, or elements" and "brought to an end, concluded."

Suddenly I realized that I was shaping my life according to that second definition of "complete." I was tending to measure the success of my day by the number of tasks I could cross off my list. Often I was accepting the notion that when my desk was cleared or household chores were finished, my life would be a lot better—that somehow I'd gain whatever completeness I believed I was lacking.

This concept suggests that the primary purpose of any activity is simply to get through with it! But something more than that is certainly needed in order to experience true completeness. The first definition hints at what that is—an understanding that, as God's immortal likeness, we each possess, here and now, every necessary element of our identity and well-being.

However often experience may seem to belie this great fact, it is unmistakably declared in the Scriptures. There we discover statements ringing with the conviction of man's completeness in God—such as, "God is able to make all grace abound toward you; that ye, always having all sufficiency in all things, may abound to every good work" (II Cor. 9:8). There we also find, in the legacy of Christ Jesus's healing works, proof upon proof that man reflects completeness.

For example, in raising Lazarus, who had been dead for several days, Jesus faced an aggressively discouraging picture of death and burial. Yet we are told that before there was any evidence of physical change in Lazarus, Jesus said, "Father, I thank thee that thou hast heard me" (John 11:41). He rejoiced in the completeness and permanence of divine Life. He understood that, as God's spiritual likeness, man already and eternally reflected every quality of God. the only true Life. And Lazarus's emergence from the tomb confirmed this fact.

How are such proofs of practical value today? If we start from a higher standpoint, it is not difficult to realize that, essentially, daily life manifests our way of seeing things. When we view ourselves as limited and incomplete—a mortal view that directly contradicts the Biblical revelation of man as God's image—it certainly appears that we are subject to the tyranny of mortality through fear, sickness, sin, and death. Freedom comes in awaking from these false claims through seeing the truth of who we are, through following Jesus' example of beholding man spiritually.

While the Master thoroughly understood the truth of spiritual being, he regularly sought new and deeper views of God. We're told of times when he withdrew to a desert or a mountain to commune with Him. We, too, need times when we mentally, if not physically, withdraw from the clamor of the material senses and consciously seek God.

Through this search we gain a vantage point impossible to material sense. Mary Baker Eddy states, "Science reveals Life as a complete sphere, as eternal, self-existent Mind; material sense defines life as a broken sphere, as organized matter, and mind as something separate from God" (Retrospection and Introspection, p. 60). Limited, material sense is incapable of opening up that spiritually scientific vantage point which enables us to discern our present, God-given completeness. But spiritual sense is able to do this, especially when we engage it by opening our thought, through prayer and study, to the enlivening insights of the Bible and of the Christian Science textbook, Science and Health by Mrs. Eddy.

Even if we have only a glimmer of the importance of time alone with God, we may well feel we'd as soon go without breakfast or some sleep as face the day without it. In fact, the wisest thing we can do is to schedule this prayerful time right at the beginning of the day. First, because the day's demands haven't yet had a chance to encroach. Second, because it positions us for a heightened perspective on the whole day. And finally, because awakening to the reality of Life, Truth, and Love is the one thing that can truly uplift and transform us and therefore deserves priority in our lives.

Changing our view of God and man so that we're increasingly seeing ourselves and others as God sees us is a natural effect of this spiritual commitment. As a result, we give more attention to the qualities we include as God's image than to how many tasks we're able to conclude.

Just what this means in practical terms has been a continuing discovery for me since the day I came across these definitions of complete. My return to teaching after a twenty-year hiatus has brought unprecedented demands in terms of class size, workload, and disciplinary challenges. I can't say there haven't been temptations to feel frustrated or overwhelmed. But these have been met with an increasing ability to view challenges as a means through which to see divine Love, Principle, at work, providing all that's needed, fulfilling the divine purpose.

I've watched in grateful wonder as God expresses in me persistent love, needed inspiration, and upwelling joy even before the conclusion of a task is in sight. To me this is proof that cherishing and living this revelation of Life as "a complete sphere" make a powerful difference here and now.

With this assurance of Life's completeness—and therefore of our own—our days and lives can't be molded into patterns of drudgery and stress. To catch even a glimpse of life as divine Science reveals it is to experience Immanuel, "God with us," and the genuine progress this brings.

JOHN

He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit: for without me ye can do nothing.

John 15:5