When I came across a T-shirt with a picture of Einstein and the caption “Don’t let gravity get you down,” I thought that the pun was not only clever and humorous, but that it also bore a powerful metaphysical message.

Through many forms of media, we are constantly hearing news that would tend to pull thought downward into discouragement, even hopelessness. At times, we might feel like victims of this mental gravity and unable to overcome it. The message on that shirt, though, is a helpful reminder to me that we can overcome it. Each one of us has the God-given ability and divine right to mentally challenge and rise above any downward pull of mortal thinking, no matter how aggressive or persistent. 

But we cannot successfully do this through human will—by simply trying to stay positive or keeping a smile on our face. We read in Scripture, “Draw nigh to God, and he will draw nigh to you” (James 4:8), and in the Christian Science textbook, “Mortals must gravitate Godward, their affections and aims grow spiritual,—they must near the broader interpretations of being, and gain some proper sense of the infinite,—in order that sin and mortality may be put off” (Mary Baker Eddy, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 265). 

The Bible is full of accounts of men and women who overcame discouragement and despair by drawing closer to God and rising higher in their understanding of Him and of what constitutes reality. Christ Jesus, the Way-shower, was continually showing us how to “gravitate Godward.” He gave us the Lord’s Prayer and the entire Sermon on the Mount as guides. And he illustrated—through his demonstrations of the power of God in healing the sick and sinning—the benefits of spiritualizing thought. He proved over and over, through his clear understanding of God as Life, that man is immortal and spiritual, and that sin, disease, and terror are not the realities of life in God. Jesus overcame them all through divine Truth and Love. 

Man is immortal and spiritual, and sin, disease, and terror are not the realities of life in God. 

For instance, upon hearing the news that his friend Lazarus was sick, Jesus appeared undisturbed. He was so certain of man’s spiritual nature and existence that he was able to assure his disciples, “This sickness is not unto death, but for the glory of God, that the Son of God might be glorified thereby.” In fact, he waited in calm trust for two days before going to see Lazarus, despite the seeming urgency of the situation. When he did go to where the family lived, he learned that Lazarus had already been in a grave for four days. While Jesus loved Lazarus and had compassion for those who were grieving for him, he didn’t let the gravity of the situation hold him down. At his command, Lazarus arose and walked (see John 11:1–45).

Not only did Jesus raise Lazarus physically, but he also gave all an opportunity to gain a higher understanding of immortal life and the indestructible spiritual nature of God’s man. The Bible says that many of the Jews who witnessed Lazarus’ resurrection “believed on him,” indicating that they, too, had risen to some degree above a limiting, mortal sense of life.

In Jesus’ resurrection, and then in his ascension, he defied material law and proved man’s complete freedom from the supposed gravitational pull of any claim of mental or physical power or reality. He expressed the Christ, his divine nature, demonstrating to all that man is subject only to God’s unfailing law of eternal Life.

I have found this comforting to remember when the material picture seems fearful or alarming. No matter what the picture presents, whether war, disunity, or disease, the Christ is ever present in human consciousness, revealing to every receptive thought that “we live, and move, and have our being” in God (Acts 17:28). In God’s kingdom, which constitutes all that is real, there is only the consciousness of harmonious being. There is no fallen man drawn downward into the dust of mortality, impressed by unreality or burdened by the sins and woes of the world. We can rejoice that God’s law of Life is continuously drawing all of our thoughts upward into spiritual understanding, through which we see and experience the boundless living of spiritual existence.