Sunday June 20th, 2021 Roundtable
How to Control the Weather
This week’s Lesson Sermon Subject: Is the Universe, Including Man, Evolved by Atomic Force?
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Morning Prayers
God creates and governs the universe, including man. The universe is filled with spiritual ideas, which He evolves, and they are obedient to the Mind that makes them.
— from Science and Health, 1910, by Mary Baker Eddy, page 295
God governs all, is All-in-all. God is our constant Guide and Guardian. No mortal thought, known or unknown, seen or unseen, can interfere with the manifestation of Love’s presence with us. The weather manifests God’s government, and no evildoers can change this fact. The devils of human thought — all the powers of many minds — are powerless in Love’s presence. God is All. God is Mind.
— from Watches, Prayers, and Arguments by Mary Baker Eddy, pages 100
All is Love, peace and harmony. Heaven is right here. Truth reigns. There is no strife. Peace, be still. Truth has destroyed the error. Love has destroyed all hate. All is peace. Love and joy. Run and not be weary. The need of the hour is simplicity, meekness and obedience.
— from Divinity Course and General Collectanea, (the “Blue Book”), by Mary Baker Eddy, page 56
Discussion points
189 — WATCH lest you go to the pool of Bethesda with a thimble as measuring your spiritual desire. This illustration should awaken thought to the error involved in a limited application of God’s infinite power.
A limited trust in Truth, or a limited application of its power, will not result in much spiritual growth. Why limit the power of spiritual thought? Mrs. Eddy tells us in Science and Health that it reaches over continent and ocean, to the globe’s remotest bounds. Shall we limit its power to healing a few sick bodies or a few bothersome ills? Let us eschew any belief in a finite use of infinite good.
Once in working for a patient, the following lines came into my thought:
In the midst of my darkness my sore heart cried out,
Oh, Father, make haste; put the devil to rout;
Come down as I travail, and ease my dread pain,
So that I may go forth and be useful again!
My child, hear My words which thy Master hath given,
“All ye that do labor, come up unto heaven.”
Ask not for My greatness to come down to thee.
Arise from thy littleness, up unto Me!
— 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.”
Neither person, place nor claim of circumstances can stand between me and God.
— from Divinity Course and General Collectanea, the “Blue Book,” by Mary Baker Eddy, page 237
Chapter Sixty-two Mary Baker Eddy, Her Spiritual Footsteps by Gilbert Carpenter
Book — Memoirs of Mary Baker Eddy by Adam H. Dickey, C.S.D.
Forum post — Praise ye the Lord by Karen from CA
Forum post — “Man Evolved by Atomic Force” – Dust vs. Deity by Parthens
Forum post — Chorazin, Bethsaida, Capernaum by Patricia from Ontario
Forum post — The Real Marriage Feast – The Real Family by Patricia from Ontario
Forum post — FROM the heavens IN the heights by Patricia from Ontario
Forum post — A thought, a seed, a flower. by Lynda from NJ
Loneliness is but a false claim of incompleteness and separation from God and His ideas. When one indulges a sense of loneliness, he allows a myth, a false belief, to obscure the true idea of home. He has strayed from the Father’s house, the consciousness of the all-sufficient, everpresent divine Love, and momentarily has lost sight of his true selfhood as the beloved child of God. It is personal sense that experiences loneliness. Spiritual sense recognizes neither lack nor incompleteness.
— from Christian Science Sentinel, November 25, 1939
Then began he to upbraid the cities, … he very seasonably and righteously began to reproach them with their ungenerous treatment of him, their ingratitude to him, their unbelief in him, the hardness and impenitence of their hearts; which could not be moved to repent of their evil ways, and believe in him, and acknowledge him as the Messiah, by all the instructions he gave them, and miracles he wrought among them: for the cities he has a view to, were such, wherein most of his mighty works were done; the most for number, and the greatest in their kind; as particularly at Capernaum; where he cured the centurion’s servant, recovered Peter’s wife’s mother from a fever, healed the man sick of a palsy, raised Jairus’s daughter from the dead, made whole the woman that had a bloody issue, opened the eyes of two blind men, and cast out a devil from a dumb man, possessed with one: all these, and more, he did in this one city, and therefore he might justly upbraid them, because they repented not: not because they did not commend him, and speak well of his works, for he sought not his own glory, but their good: all he did was, in order to bring men to repentance of their sins, and faith in himself, that they might Bensonbe saved.
— from Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
Final Readings
“My yoke is easy.”
Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. — CHRIST JESUS. “Ye shall find rest unto your souls,”—the reward is abundant, and day by day, as our spiritual understanding grows clearer through the revelations of Christian Science, does this promise convey a richer meaning and come nearer fulfilment in our experience. In a measure, as we learn of Christ and partake of his meekness and lowliness of heart, we are coming to understand the promise; in a measure, too, we are learning the nature of the burden to be borne. But do we realize the two-fold significance of taking Christ’s yoke upon us; what this act implies on our part, what it meant to the Master?
Through centuries of association, the yoke has come to be a sign of servitude and bondage: the oxen at the plow are yoked together; the Israelites in their captivity were under the yoke of their oppressors. Hence, by voluntarily taking Christ’s yoke upon us, we signify our intention to labor in the kingdom of God, not, however, as captives, unwillingly, but of our own free choice. From the Scriptures we learn that God “desires mercy, and not sacrifice,” and the Master said, “Henceforth I call you not servants; … but I have called you friends.” The Master who said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life,” would not demand submission merely for the sake of submission, nor a sign of servitude as an end in itself. Though the yoke has, in the history of material man and beast, become the symbol of servility, its true object is not to show subjection, but rather that the oxen may the better do the work of their master; may bear their burdens more easily than would be possible without it. So also in its spiritual sense, the yoke is not a burden, but a means of lightening our burdens, and enabling us to perform our duty as children of Him whom we acknowledge as our Father, the creator and Life of all. When we take upon us the yoke of Christ, — that is, when we give our obedience to Truth with the right conception of Life, the right understanding and estimate of all things, — we find our strength increasing through the very act of submitting to this yoke which our wearied senses, in their ignorance, had looked upon as an added burden. Our Master, Christ, relieves us of the heavy weight of the yoke of selfishness and erring judgment; relieves us, in proportion to our willingness and faithfulness, of our burden of sins and diseases, anxieties and perplexities of mortal existence. Instead of these, Truth offers us a share in the labor that is light with hope and satisfying in the certainty and fulness of its fruits, — even the labor of spreading the gospel of Life and Truth and Love; and to help us in this work, we are provided with the easy yoke of obedience to the all-wise and unerring Principle, Love.
— from Christian Science Sentinel, June 10, 1905, by May Louise Jacobs