Sunday, December 5th, 2021 Roundtable
Your Relationship With God
This week’s Lesson Sermon Subject: God the only Cause and Creator
Click here to play the audio as you read:
Morning Prayers
In the spiritual Genesis of creation, all law was vested in the Lawgiver, who was a law to Himself. In divine Science, God is One and All; and, governing Himself, He governs the universe. This is the law of creation: “My defense is of God, which saveth the upright in heart.” And that infinite Mind governs all things. On this infinite Principle of freedom, God named Himself, I AM.
— from Miscellaneous Writings by Mary Baker Eddy, page 258
For God is All-in-all, the only creator of the only universe and man. We are His children and we do realize the all-fulness of the omnipotence of God.
— from Divinity Course and General Collectanea, (the “Blue Book”), by Mary Baker Eddy, page 77
Discussion points
307 — WATCH lest, when Christian Science demands gratitude from its adherents, you believe that it should be for effect. Gratitude for effect is the first step the infant in Science is capable of taking; but progress should soon bring him to gratitude for cause.
When a child is given a gift, it becomes so engrossed in it, that it forgets to thank, or even remember, the donor. It has to be reminded to do so. God’s gifts are given to man in order that they may be perpetual reminders of Him, and not an occasion to forget Him in one’s absorption in, and gratitude for, the gifts.
It may be said that God never sends man gifts; He brings them! Man should never become so absorbed in the gift that he loses sight of the presence of the Giver. Gratitude is the means whereby we remain perpetually conscious of God’s presence, by seeing Him as the source of every good gift. When we are grateful for effect, if that gratitude is metaphysical, our thought will naturally turn to cause. Then we will be in no danger of becoming so enamoured of effect, that we lose sight of cause.
— from 500 Watching Points by Gilbert Carpenter
GOLDEN TEXT: Proverbs 3 : 19
“The Lord by wisdom hath founded the earth; by understanding hath he established the heavens.”
Audio Book – Unity of Good by Mary Baker Eddy
“Christ and Christmas” Part 2 from — December 2021 Love is the Liberator
“Christ and Christmas” Part 1 from — December 2020 Love is the Liberator
It is neither Science nor Truth which acts through blind belief, nor is it the human understanding of the divine healing Principle as manifested in Jesus, whose humble prayers were deep and conscientious protests of Truth, — of man’s likeness to God and of man’s unity with Truth and Love.
From — Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy, page 12
Article — “Gifts” by Florence Roberts
Daily Duties: from Christian Science Manual by Mary Baker Eddy
Article — “Radiation and Absorption” by A. Learner
Forum posts — God the Only Cause and Creator — December 5th, 2021
Text read during Roundtable.
— “Heaven and Earth” from Christian Science Sentinel, May 24th, 1924, by Julia M. Johnston
Final Readings
“Here in the body pent,
Strangers from Thee, we roam;
But nightly pitch our moving tent,
A day’s march nearer Home,”—
The hymn says, and the writer went deeper, and nearer the heart of Truth, than he knew. Verily, if we shut ourselves up in our bodies, we are “strangers from God.” How they bind and fetter us! We are not the “Lord’s freemen,” when we consent to be so enslaved, and yet it is our own fault.
Our bodies are like unruly children, whose parents have always obeyed them, until they expect and attempt to govern everybody. We have consulted them on every point. If we wished to do certain things, we have turned around to our bodies, and asked, “Will it make you sick? Shall you pay me for this with a head-ache?”
If the wind happened to blow on us, we have inquired, “Are you cold?” or declared, “This will give me neuralgia in my head.” Virtually we have said to our material structure, “Come thou and rule over us; “and decided for ourselves that it had been done; and all this time we have been in bondage to a phantom.
For these poor earthly bodies have no life in themselves, and cannot declare themselves rulers over anything.
How changed is our condition, when we awake to this fact! When we learn that we can control our bodies, instead of having them control us, we begin to “try our wings,” as it were; and instead of being dragged down to earth, we fly aloft into a purer atmosphere.
We begin to leave our bodies behind, and reach out into the realm of Spirit, and then at last, catch a faint gleam of what it means to be “present with the Lord.”
“Willing rather to be absent from the body, and to be present with the Lord.” Ah, yes! more than “willing” — eager, glad of this most happy exchange.
Who of us has not had this yearning, even before we knew aught of Christian Science, or ever heard the name of its Discoverer and Founder. But did ever one, however sincerely Christian, succeed in getting that despot, the body, out of the way, that the real presence of the Lord might be felt? Have we not been carefully taught in all systems of Theology, that to do this, we must pass the portal called death? Even those triumphant words of Paul, “O, death, where is thy sting? O, grave, where is thy victory?” were made to mean that death alone brought us into the presence of the Lord, ” to go no more out forever.”
But now we have learned the new tongue. “Old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.” “Thanks be unto God, who giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ!” Away then with these false claims of the body! Let us have none of this which shuts us out of His living, loving, abiding presence.
— “Absent from the Body, and Present with the Lord.” from the Christian Science Journal, February 1894 by E. A. Everet