Sunday October 31st, 2021 Roundtable
Whom the Lord Loveth He Chasteneth
This week’s Lesson Sermon Subject: Everlasting Punishment
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Morning Prayers
God is All, and in all: that finishes the question of a good and a bad side to existence. Truth is the real; error is the unreal. You will gather the importance of this saying, when sorrow seems to come, if you will look on the bright side; for sorrow endureth but for the night, and joy cometh with the light. Then will your sorrow be a dream, and your waking the reality, even the triumph of Soul over sense. If you wish to be happy, argue with yourself on the side of happiness; take the side you wish to carry, and be careful not to talk on both sides, or to argue stronger for sorrow than for joy. You are the attorney for the case, and will win or lose according to your plea.
— from Christian Healing, by Mary Baker Eddy, page 10
Discussion points
420 — WATCH lest you become too concerned over your own spiritual progress. We must learn to have patience and to wait on God, since Mrs. Eddy once said, “In proportion to your growth will you see things.”
Jesus recommended that we consider ourselves as lilies that grow naturally. Let us realize that progress is the law of God, — it is continuous and inevitable. Mrs. Eddy once said, “To be over-anxious regarding one’s own progress is to acknowledge a person apart from God.” When biscuits are placed in the oven, do they worry lest the heat fail to bake them?
— from 500 Watching Points by Gilbert Carpenter
GOLDEN TEXT: Job 5 : 17
“Behold, happy is the man whom God correcteth: therefore despise not thou the chastening of the Almighty.”
Poem — Making the Port by Rev. G. A. Kratzer
Forum posts from — the Biblle Lesson for Everlasting Punishment — October 31st, 2021
We must resign with good grace what we are denied, and press on with what we are, for we cannot do more than we are nor understand what is not ripening in us. To do good to all because we love all, and to use in God’s service the one talent that we all have, is our only means of adding to that talent and the best way to silence a deep discontent with our shortcomings.
— from Miscellany by Mary Baker Eddy, page 195
Jesus answered and said to him, “If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word; and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our home with him.”
— from John 14:23 in the New King James Bible
Final Readings
The road is straight and narrow. Can we leave our time-worn habits and let the scales of human theory peel from the faculties of thought? Are we willing to part with superstition? Do we deplore our ignorance? Are we willing to subject the old man to tests of persecution, until we can lay him off, and rise with David to say, “I shall be satisfied, when I awake, with thy likeness”? If so, we are ready to advance, taking one step compels us to take another. There is no going backward; “no cloak for their sin.” The narrowness of the road often causes a sense of nervousness, and the straightness a sense of impatience, but we cannot turn to the right or left, for the road is straight and narrow. By-and-by we get accustomed to it, and find ourselves praying that nought shall turn us away from its straightness and narrowness.
Along the road grow the flowers of patience, meekness, humility, love, tenderness, faith, joy, and courage. The thistles of discouragement, sadness, and despair; the thorns of pride, conceit, and selfishness, peep up from the soil, and prick our feet, and hurt our heart, but near a thorn the lily says: “I am beside thee,” and near a thistle the rose is saying: “See how sweet I look,” and thus, as we advance, thorns prick on one side, and flowers shed their perfume on the other, when, finally, the road broadens, until there is no road at all, and no thorns at all, but God is everywhere, and All-in-all, and His flowers are sprinkling their dewdrops under our feet and in our hearts, and we shall find ourselves redeemed.
— from Christian Science Sentinel, January 24, 1901, BY M. Bettie Bell.