Category: From Pam

“Stillness”
What does it mean?
Is it possible to be still?
Does being still have value to us today?
What is it? Where do we find it? How do we find it?

Throughout the Bible that we love, men and women understood and exemplified stillness, and spiritual knowing. (To be still means a quiet; hush; calm; peace, quietude, serenity, the ability to be receptive.)

 What effect did this spiritual demeanor have on their lives? What was the result on their family, their relationships, their purpose, their country? (Or, if they were not quiet of thought, what effect did this have?)

As I write this, late at night a storm blusters outside my window, wind and water mingling, producing noise and a disturbance of unusual force.

My prayer is that right here, right now, where the storm appears to be, right here in my thought is peace. My spiritual sense, quieted and trusting, assures me that all of God’s perfect creation, every detail, is safe, hid with Christ in God. The peace, the stillness I feel brings me a sense of calm and safety. The storm in me is replaced with quiet confidence in divine Mind’s ability to care for Its own. It has become quiet outside. I am grateful.

Did not Jesus still the storm by bringing his disciples into his peace? Can we do this? Absolutely.

How? Refuse to be agitated, blustery, inflamed, or afraid. Refuse to react. Choose peace.
Establish as your thought the very present presence of divine Mind.
Be still and hear . . .
Be still and listen . . .
Be still and see . . .
Be still and understand . . .

Be still and know that you are one with God.

 Divine mind is heard most clearly when the humble heart is ready to hear.

Join me in embodying peace, quietude, pure spiritual sense. Get still. Trust. Be deeply consecrated to your work as a Christian Scientist, with all that means to you, for the world. Bring to every circumstance your peace, your spiritual centeredness, your calm trust in the ever-present presence of God, good.

What enabled our Leader to find inspiration for Science And Health in that attic room with only a skylight? What allowed her to hear, to receive and write down the inspired word she was given? How quiet her thought must have been . . . how powerful her prayer.

Do realize, please, that if this stillness/quiet/peaceful prayer is lived and obeyed, it will immediately bring you a clearer spiritual sense; remove confusion; lead your thought to a more focused, dedicated life of prayer and inspiration.

This instruction, obeyed, will transform your view of the world. You will choose quiet prayer instead of fear, criticism, or gossip. You will put “tempting technology” in its proper place, and it will not compel you to it instead of to prayer and inspiration.

Be obedient to your inspiration. Don’t be afraid to “be still and know that I am God.” Don’t be afraid that stillness is not enough. Try it! You will feel much more in charge of your thought, your moments, and your days. Right ideas and opportunities come to those who listen and then wisely respond. Good is always the result of faithful prayer. This is what truly changes the world!

Live your quiet! Live your stillness. And live your inspired peace.
“Be still and know . . . “
. . . the very present presence of infinite, divine Mind.  🌹

If I speak God’s Word with power, revealing all his mysteries and making everything plain as day, and if I have faith that says to a mountain, “Jump,” and it jumps, but I don’t love, I’m nothing.

If I speak with human eloquence and angelic ecstasy but don’t love, I’m nothing but the creaking of a rusty gate.

If I give everything I own to the poor and even go to the stake to be burned as a martyr, but I don’t love, I’ve gotten nowhere. So, no matter what I say, what I believe, and what I do, I’m bankrupt without love.

Love never gives up. Love cares more for others than for self. Love doesn’t want what it doesn’t have. Love doesn’t strut, Doesn’t have a swelled head,

Doesn’t force itself on others, Isn’t always “me first,” Doesn’t fly off the handle, Doesn’t keep score of the sins of others,

Doesn’t revel when others grovel, Takes pleasure in the flowering of truth,

Puts up with anything,

Trusts God always,

Always looks for the best,

Never looks back, But keeps going to the end.

Love never dies.

Inspired speech will be over some day; praying in tongues will end; understanding will reach its limit.

We know only a portion of the truth, and what we say about God is always incomplete.

But when the Complete arrives, our incompletes will be canceled.

When I was an infant at my mother’s breast, I gurgled and cooed like any infant. When I grew up, I left those infant ways for good.

We don’t yet see things clearly. We’re squinting in a fog, peering through a mist. But it won’t be long before the weather clears and the sun shines bright! We’ll see it all then, see it all as clearly as God sees us, knowing him directly just as he knows us!

But for right now, until that completeness, we have three things to do to lead us toward that consummation: Trust steadily in God, hope unswervingly, love extravagantly.
And the best of the three is love. ♥️

1 Corinthians 13
TheMessage Bible

By Henry van Dyke

Henry van Dyke was a member of the clergy. This story reads like a sermon for good reason. Its full title is A Short Christmas Sermon: Keeping Christmas. Van Dyke also composed lyrics to the popular hymn, “The Hymn of Joy” sung to Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9, “Ode to Joy”.

ROMANS, xiv, 6: He that regardeth the day, regardeth it unto the Lord.

It is a good thing to observe Christmas day. The mere marking of times and seasons, when men agree to stop work and make merry together, is a wise and wholesome custom. It helps one to feel the supremacy of the common life over the individual life. It reminds a man to set his own little watch, now and then, by the great clock of humanity which runs on sun time.

But there is a better thing than the observance of Christmas day, and that is, keeping Christmas.

Are you willing to forget what you have done for other people, and to remember what other people have done for you; to ignore what the world owes you, and to think what you owe the world; to put your rights in the background, and your duties in the middle distance, and your chances to do a little more than your duty in the foreground; to see that your fellow-men are just as real as you are, and try to look behind their faces to their hearts, hungry for joy; to own that probably the only good reason for your existence is not what you are going to get out of life, but what you are going to give to life; to close your book of complaints against the management of the universe, and look around you for a place where you can sow a few seeds of happiness–are you willing to do these things even for a day? Then you can keep Christmas.

Are you willing to stoop down and consider the needs and the desires of little children; to remember the weakness and loneliness of people who are growing old; to stop asking how much your friends love you, and ask yourself whether you love them enough; to bear in mind the things that other people have to bear on their hearts; to try to understand what those who live in the same house with you really want, without waiting for them to tell you; to trim your lamp so that it will give more light and less smoke, and to carry it in front so that your shadow will fall behind you; to make a grave for your ugly thoughts, and a garden for your kindly feelings, with the gate open–are you willing to do these things even for a day? Then you can keep Christmas.

Are you willing to believe that love is the strongest thing in the world–stronger than hate, stronger than evil, stronger than death–and that the blessed life which began in Bethlehem nineteen hundred years ago is the image and brightness of the Eternal Love? Then you can keep Christmas.

And if you keep it for a day, why not always?

But you can never keep it alone. 🌺

Matthew 6: 9 

From a wonderful book called “The Lord’s Prayer.”

By William Barclay, a renowned Scottish minister.

“IF we believe that God is Father, it settles our relationship to one another. If God is Father, he is Father of all people.  The Lord’s Prayer does not teach us to pray My Father; it teaches us to pray Our Father. It is very significant that in the Lord’s Prayer the words I, me and mine never occur; it is true to say that Jesus came to take these words out of life and to put in their place we, us and ours. God is no one’s exclusive possession. The very phrase Our Father involves the elimination of self.  The fatherhood of God is the only possible basis of human relationships. 

“If we believe that God is Father, it settles our relationship to ourselves. There are times for each and every one of us when we despise and hate ourselves…., and no one knows our unworthiness better than we do ourselves.”

It was suggested to add a new beatitude, “‘Blessed are those who give us back our self-respect.’ That is precisely what God does. In these grim….moments, we can still remind ourselves that, even if we matter to no one else, we matter to God; that in the infinite mercy of God we are of royal lineage, children of the King of Kings. 

“If we believe that God is Father, it settles our relationship to God. It is not that it removes the might, majesty and power of God. It is not that it makes God any the less God; but it makes that might, and majesty, and power approachable for us.”

By Pam

Reflecting Spirit, 

you have divine rights, 

heaven-bestowed harmony. 

You are infinite understanding.

Reflecting God, 

you express the beauty of holiness, 

the perfection of being, 

imperishable glory.

Reflecting Truth,  

you possess immortality.

Reflecting Love, 

you include and receive the highest degree of happiness.

Reflecting Life, 

you have life 

without beginning or end.

God, divine Mind, supreme and All, governs all.

God is the substance, the I AM THAT I AM.

I am Spirit. Man, spiritual, is My likeness.

See Science and Health, p. 253 for more musical details.

By Pam

Have you ever thought why it is easy to pray for someone you love?

It’s simple. It’s because we love them so deeply that we see only good in them and we want only the very best for them. Any maybe because we know how very special and wonderful they are, so good and kind and unselfish, that we can easily see how much they deserve our love and prayer.

And so, with a full heart of love, we reach out in our prayer to see their oneness with God, divine Mind, and acknowledge their right to perfection and harmony as the very loved ideas of a loving, all good God.

Isn’t that true?

We will even demand, right in the face of a loved one’s challenge or struggle, that they are good and deserve all good.

So now, love another as yourself, or love yourself as you love another?

How often do we think harshly of ourself?  With criticism.  Not good enough. Not prompt enough. Not strong enough. Don’t know enough.

The list of self judgment can get very long.

And truly loving ourselves as we love another, or as God who is Love itself, loves each and every one of us, seems almost impossible.

If you can truly love another without judgment or jury, what would you say to being and doing this great kindness to your view of yourself? What would you think about finding God’s unconditional love for you, for example, in each Lesson each week.  Then you will see that as you love others, you, too, are very loved.

This brings freedom, health, and real happiness all round, every where, to each one, our loved ones, those we pray with, and ourselves as well.

(came Love’s message..,,,)

“I Am All,”

God, good, the only presence,  the only power.

Grow in your conviction of this truth.

God IS all good, eve-present good.

God IS Love.

God IS Life.

God IS All.

Know with all your heart and mind,

God, good, can know no evil.  Demand this. 

Work simply to understand why

God, all good, knows not evil.

Let your God be All to you, regardless.

And from this basis, be strong, live, heal.

Moses did. Jesus did.  Others have.

This changed the world.

Learn of this. Live from it.

It will change you and 

You will continue to love, bless, and benefit your world.

Let nothing take your God from you.

ROSEMARY C. COBHAM

From the October 15, 1938 issue of the Christian Science Sentinel

---

Home is the consciousness of good
That holds us in its wide embrace;
The steady light that comforts us
In every path our footsteps trace.

Our Father’s house has many rooms,
And each with peace and love imbued;
No child can ever stray beyond
The compass of infinitude.

Home is the Father’s sweet “Well done,”
God’s daily, hourly gift of grace.
We go to meet our brother’s need,
And find our home in every place.

************

Perect for our prayers today.

This is a hymn In the newest Hymnal Supplement.

This is from The Message, and it turned my life around one time when I had a real need to see my life could really trust God because I was God’s story….always  very important lesson.  Pam

“Trusting God

“So how do we fit what we know of Abraham, our first father in the faith, into this new way of looking at things? If Abraham, by what he did for God, got God to approve him, he could certainly have taken credit for it. But the story we’re given is a God–story, not an Abraham–story.

“What we read in Scripture is, ‘Abraham entered into what God was doing for him, and that was the turning point. He trusted God to set him right instead of trying to be right on his own.’

“If you’re a hard worker and do a good job, you deserve your pay; we don’t call your wages a gift. But if you see that the job is too big for you, that it’s something only God can do, and you trust him to do it—you could never do it for yourself no matter how hard and long you worked—well, that trusting–him–to–do–it is what gets you set right with God, by God. Sheer gift.

“Abraham didn’t focus on his own impotence and say, ‘It’s hopeless. This hundred–year–old body could never father a child.’ Nor did he survey Sarah’s decades of infertility and give up. He didn’t tiptoe around God’s promise asking cautiously skeptical questions. He plunged into the promise and came up strong, ready for God, sure that God would make good on what he had said. That’s why it is said, ‘Abraham was declared fit before God by trusting God to set him right.’

“But it’s not just Abraham;  it’s also us! The same thing gets said about us when we embrace and believe the One who brought Jesus to life when the conditions were equally hopeless. The sacrificed Jesus made us fit for God, set us right with God.”

Romans 4:19-25 | MSG

“ In alert expectancy such as this, we’re never left feeling shortchanged. Quite the contrary—we can’t round up enough containers to hold everything God generously pours into our lives through the Holy Spirit.”

Romans 5:4c-5 | The Message