Sunday April 11th, 2021 Roundtable
Don’t Give In to Discouragement
This week’s Lesson Sermon Subject: Are Sin, Disease, and Death Real?
Click here to play the audio as you read:
Morning Prayers
Goodness never fails to receive its reward, for goodness makes life a blessing. As an active portion of one stupendous whole, goodness identifies man with universal good. Thus may each member of this church rise above the oft-repeated inquiry, What am I? to the scientific response: I am able to impart truth, health, and happiness, and this is my rock of salvation and my reason for existing.
— from Miscellany by Mary Baker Eddy, page 165
Discussion points
301 — WATCH lest, when you are sick, you ask, “Oh, God! Why have you done this to me?” Rather should you ask, “Oh, God! Why have I done this to you?” There are times when we need a rude awakening from our mental lethargy. Perhaps we have become indifferent to God and to our obligations to Him. Perhaps we have put effect ahead of cause in our procession, put matter at the head of it, where only God, Spirit, belongs.
Perhaps we have been sailing along so smoothly that we have thrown our skipper overboard. Divine guidance is so essential that we must have experiences that convince us that, if we let go of it, we are liable to go on the rocks. Once a boy stumbled over a stone as he walked along with uplifted eyes, thinking about God. He was thinking about God, but he was not using His guidance, since he did not see a pit that lay in his path. Stumbling over the stone so shocked him out of his reverie, that he was saved a plunge into the pit. When he realized what had happened, he was grateful for the very stone at which he was at first angry.
— from 500 Watching Points by Gilbert Carpenter
Golden Text — “Since the beginning of the world men have not heard, nor perceived by the ear, neither hath the eye seen, O God, beside thee, what he hath prepared for him that waiteth for him.” — Isaiah 64 : 4
Article — “The Devil’s Auction” by by William Rathvon, CSB
Hitherto hath the LORD helped us.
— 1 Samuel 7:12 from the King James Bible
WATCH — Everyone in this house is better every hour, every half hour, every moment they are gaining health and holiness.
— from Watches, Prayers, and Arguments by Mary Baker Eddy, pages 44
1 — WATCH lest you attempt to do anything in Christian Science from any standpoint except that of joy. Our Leader’s hymn admonishes us to follow and rejoice all the rugged way. Work in Christian Science that is done joyously, has a power and effectiveness that work done as a solemn duty never has. If you seem to have lost your joy obey Mrs. Eddy’s command, “If your joy is lost, handle animal magnetism.” If this is properly done, your joy will return, and you can again take up your work. Our Leader once wrote to George Kinter, “Gladness and rejoicing are divine in essence, and their reward is manifold in its effect.”
If you should fall through the ice, you would become further imprisoned if you attempted to swim at once for the shore. The first thing to do is to rise. Then you can clamber onto the surface of the ice and walk to shore. This rising to the surface symbolizes the lightening of thought necessary, in preparation for all effort in Christian Science. “The hope of the righteous shall be gladness.” Prov. 10:28.
— from 500 Watching Points by Gilbert Carpenter
And the scribes and Pharisees brought to him a woman taken in adultery; and when they had set her in the middle…
The Pharisees, convicted by their conscience, go away from Jesus; the woman, convicted by her conscience, remains with Jesus; the Pharisees conceal and withdraw from the Saviour their sin, which yet they cannot deny; the woman surrenders her sin to Jesus. for the burden of it she cannot bear. In short, the woman is penitent — the Pharisees are not. Thus it came to pass that the proceeding which the Pharisees were led to adopt through malignity only served to drive a lost sheep into the arms of the good Shepherd.
— from The Two Convictions, John 8:3-11 by R. Besser
Jesus beheld in Science the perfect man, who appeared to him where sinning mortal man appears to mortals. In this perfect man the Saviour saw God’s own likeness, and this correct view of man healed the sick.
— Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy, page 477
This is God’s spiritual household; nothing can enter to annoy or destroy, to manifest sin, sickness or discouragement; for God fills this household with perfect love and peace, and governs every member of it. There can be no willpower, obstinacy nor animal magnetism to darken the atmosphere of any home, for God indeed dwells on earth and governs every event. There is no evil condition of thought that can argue or suggest or make any law to dominate me, or control me, intimidate me or crush me, or bring any evil to pass upon me, or shut out of my consciousness any good. There is no law of failure, no want, no poverty, lack or limitation.
There is no law but divine law, which is plenty, abundance, harmony and dominion. There is no mortal mind, or minds, good, bad or indifferent, individual, collective or universal that can touch me or anyone in the radius of my thoughts this day, for God, good governs me and every member of my household with perfect love.
— from Watches, Prayers, and Arguments by Mary Baker Eddy, pages 140
All things work together for good to them that love God,
— Romans 8: 28 from the King James Bible
Behold, I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves: be ye therefore wise as serpents, and harmless as doves.
— Matthew 10: 16 from the King James Bible
True practice, as our Leader says, is also teaching. “He who heals by teaching and teaches by healing, will graduate under divine honors.”
— from Class of 1923 Notes, by Joseph Mann
Final Readings
Article — “Fidelity” from Miscellaneous Writings given by Mary Baker Eddy