Theme: “Awake”
Readings from the Bible
Psalms 17:1-3 (to 1st ;),5,6,8
Hear the right, O Lord, attend unto my cry, give ear unto my prayer, that goeth not out of feigned lips. Let my sentence come forth from thy presence; let thine eyes behold the things that are equal. Thou hast proved mine heart;
Hold up my goings in thy paths, that my footsteps slip not. I have called upon thee, for thou wilt hear me, O God: incline thine ear unto me, and hear my speech.
Keep me as the apple of the eye, hide me under the shadow of thy wings,
Psalms 57:1-3 (to 1st .),3 God,7-10
Be merciful unto me, O God, be merciful unto me: for my soul trusteth in thee: yea, in the shadow of thy wings will I make my refuge, until these calamities be overpast. I will cry unto God most high; unto God that performeth all things for me. He shall send from heaven, and save me from the reproach of him that would swallow me up.
God shall send forth his mercy and his truth.
My heart is fixed, O God, my heart is fixed: I will sing and give praise. Awake up, my glory; awake, psaltery and harp: I myself will awake early. I will praise thee, O Lord, among the people: I will sing unto thee among the nations. For thy mercy is great unto the heavens, and thy truth unto the clouds.
Psalms 108:1-4
O God, my heart is fixed; I will sing and give praise, even with my glory. Awake, psaltery and harp: I myself will awake early. I will praise thee, O Lord, among the people: and I will sing praises unto thee among the nations. For thy mercy is great above the heavens: and thy truth reacheth unto the clouds.
Psalms 139:1-3,7-12,17,18
O Lord, thou hast searched me, and known me. Thou knowest my downsitting and mine uprising, thou understandest my thought afar off. Thou compassest my path and my lying down, and art acquainted with all my ways.
Whither shall I go from thy spirit? or whither shall I flee from thy presence? If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there: if I make my bed in hell, behold, thou art there. If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea; Even there shall thy hand lead me, and thy right hand shall hold me. If I say, Surely the darkness shall cover me; even the night shall be light about me. Yea, the darkness hideth not from thee; but the night shineth as the day: the darkness and the light are both alike to thee.
How precious also are thy thoughts unto me, O God! how great is the sum of them! If I should count them, they are more in number than the sand: when I awake, I am still with thee.
Isaiah 51:7-9 (to .),11 the
#Hearken unto me, ye that know righteousness, the people in whose heart is my law; fear ye not the reproach of men, neither be ye afraid of their revilings. For the moth shall eat them up like a garment, and the worm shall eat them like wool: but my righteousness shall be for ever, and my salvation from generation to generation. #Awake, awake, put on strength, O arm of the Lord; awake, as in the ancient days, in the generations of old.
the redeemed of the Lord shall return, and come with singing unto Zion; and everlasting joy shall be upon their head: they shall obtain gladness and joy; and sorrow and mourning shall flee away.
Isaiah 52:1 (to 2nd ;),7-10
Awake, awake; put on thy strength, O Zion;
#How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him that bringeth good tidings, that publisheth peace; that bringeth good tidings of good, that publisheth salvation; that saith unto Zion, Thy God reigneth! Thy watchmen shall lift up the voice; with the voice together shall they sing: for they shall see eye to eye, when the Lord shall bring again Zion. #Break forth into joy, sing together, ye waste places of Jerusalem: for the Lord hath comforted his people, he hath redeemed Jerusalem. The Lord hath made bare his holy arm in the eyes of all the nations; and all the ends of the earth shall see the salvation of our God.
Romans 13:1,8,12
Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers. For there is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained of God.
Owe no man any thing, but to love one another: for he that loveth another hath fulfilled the law.
The night is far spent, the day is at hand: let us therefore cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armour of light.
Ephesians 5:1,2,8-10 now,14
Be ye therefore followers of God, as dear children; And walk in love, as Christ also hath loved us, and hath given himself for us an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweetsmelling savour.
now are ye light in the Lord: walk as children of light: (For the fruit of the Spirit is in all goodness and righteousness and truth;) Proving what is acceptable unto the Lord.
Wherefore he saith, Awake thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light.
Readings from Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy
4:12-26
The habitual struggle to be always good is unceasing prayer. Its motives are made manifest in the blessings they bring,--blessings which, even if not acknowledged in audible words, attest our worthiness to be partakers of Love.
Simply asking that we may love God will never make us love Him; but the longing to be better and holier, expressed in daily watchfulness and in striving to assimilate more of the divine character, will mould and fashion us anew, until we awake in His likeness. We reach the Science of Christianity through demonstration of the divine nature; but in this wicked world goodness will "be evil spoken of," and patience must bring experience.
75:12-1
Jesus said of Lazarus: "Our friend Lazarus sleepeth; but I go, that I may awake him out of sleep." Jesus restored Lazarus by the understanding that Lazarus had never died, not by an admission that his body had died and then lived again. Had Jesus believed that Lazarus had lived or died in his body, the Master would have stood on the same plane of belief as those who buried the body, and he could not have resuscitated it.
When you can waken yourself or others out of the belief that all must die, you can then exercise Jesus' spiritual power to reproduce the presence of those who have thought they died,--but not otherwise.
There is one possible moment, when those living on the earth and those called dead, can commune together, and that is the moment previous to the transition, --the moment when the link between their opposite beliefs is being sundered. In the vestibule through which we pass from one dream to another dream, or when we awake from earth's sleep to the grand verities of Life, the departing may hear the glad welcome of those who have gone before.
190:14-15 np
Human birth, growth, maturity, and decay are as the grass springing from the soil with beautiful green blades, afterwards to wither and return to its native nothingness. This mortal seeming is temporal; it never merges into immortal being, but finally disap-pears, and immortal man, spiritual and eternal, is found to be the real man.
The Hebrew bard, swayed by mortal thoughts, thus swept his lyre with saddening strains on human existence:
As for man, his days are as grass:
As a flower of the field, so he flourisheth.
For the wind passeth over it, and it is gone;
And the place thereof shall know it no more.
When hope rose higher in the human heart, he sang:
As for me, I will behold Thy face in righteousness:
I shall be satisfied, when I awake, with Thy likeness. . . .
For with Thee is the fountain of life;
In Thy light shall we see light.
The brain can give no idea of God's man. It can take no cognizance of Mind. Matter is not the organ of infinite Mind.
As mortals give up the delusion that there is more than one Mind, more than one God, man in God's likeness will appear, and this eternal man will include in that likeness no material element.
As a material, theoretical life-basis is found to be a misapprehension of existence, the spiritual and divine Principle of man dawns upon human thought, and leads it to "where the young child was," --even to the birth of a new-old idea, to the spiritual sense of being and of what Life includes. Thus the whole earth will be transformed by Truth on its pinions of light, chasing away the darkness of error.
249:18-11 (to 1st .)
Life is, like Christ, "the same yesterday, and to-day, and forever." Organization and time have nothing to do with Life. You say, "I dreamed last night." What a mistake is that! The I is Spirit. God never slumbers, and His likeness never dreams. Mortals are the Adam dreamers.
Sleep and apathy are phases of the dream that life, substance, and intelligence are material. The mortal night-dream is sometimes nearer the fact of being than are the thoughts of mortals when awake. The night-dream has less matter as its accompaniment. It throws off some material fetters. It falls short of the skies, but makes its mundane flights quite ethereal.
Man is the reflection of Soul. He is the direct opposite of material sensation, and there is but one Ego. We run into error when we divide Soul into souls, multiply Mind into minds and suppose error to be mind, then mind to be in matter and matter to be a lawgiver, unintelligence to act like intelligence, and mortality to be the matrix of immortality.
Mortal existence is a dream; mortal existence has no real entity, but saith "It is I." Spirit is the Ego which never dreams, but understands all things; which never errs, and is ever conscious; which never believes, but knows; which is never born and never dies.
323:6-27
Through the wholesome chastisements of Love, we are helped onward in the march towards righteousness, peace, and purity, which are the landmarks of Science. Beholding the infinite tasks of truth, we pause,--wait on God. Then we push onward, until boundless thought walks enraptured, and conception unconfined is winged to reach the divine glory.
In order to apprehend more, we must put into practice what we already know. We must recollect that Truth is demonstrable when understood, and that good is not understood until demonstrated. If "faithful over a few things," we shall be made rulers over many; but the one unused talent decays and is lost. When the sick or the sinning awake to realize their need of what they have not, they will be receptive of divine Science, which gravitates towards Soul and away from material sense, removes thought from the body, and elevates even mortal mind to the contemplation of something better than disease or sin. The true idea of God gives the true understanding of Life and Love, robs the grave of victory, takes away all sin and the delusion that there are other minds, and destroys mortality.
442:30
Christian Scientists, be a law to yourselves that mental malpractice cannot harm you either when asleep or when awake.
327:22
Fear of punishment never made man truly honest. Moral courage is requisite to meet the wrong and to proclaim the right. But how shall we reform the man who has more animal than moral courage, and who has not the true idea of good? Through human consciousness, convince the mortal of his mistake in seeking material means for gaining happiness. Reason is the most active human faculty. Let that inform the sentiments and awaken the man's dormant sense of moral obligation, and by degrees he will learn the nothingness of the pleasures of human sense and the grandeur and bliss of a spiritual sense, which silences the material or corporeal. Then he not only will be saved, but ^is^ saved.
552:32
Naturalists describe the origin of mortal and material existence in the various forms of embryology, and accompany their descriptions with important observations, which should awaken thought to a higher and purer contemplation of man's origin. This clearer consciousness must precede an understanding of the harmony of being. Mortal thought must obtain a better basis, get nearer the truth of being, or health will never be universal, and harmony will never become the standard of man.
354:23
The night of materiality is far spent, and with the dawn Truth will waken men spiritually to hear and to speak the new tongue.
Hymn 5
Irving C. Tomlinson
A voice from heaven we have heard,
The call to rise from earth;
Put armor on, the sword now gird,
And for the fight go forth.
The foe in ambush claims our prize,
Then heed high heaven's call.
Obey the voice of Truth, arise,
And let not fear enthrall.
The cause requires unswerving might:
With God alone agree.
Then have no other aim than right;
End bondage, O be free.
Depart from sin, awake to love:
Your mission is to heal.
Then all of Truth you must approve,
And only know the real.
Hymn 181
Rosemary B. Hackett
Loving Father, we Thy children
Look to Thee in fear's dark night
While the angels of Thy presence
Guide us upward to the light.
Then we feel the power that lifts us
To Thy holy secret place,
Where our gloom is lost in glory
As we see Thee face to face.
We would learn, O gracious Father,
To reflect Thy healing love.
May we all awake to praise Thee
For Thy good gifts from above.
Make us strong to bear the message
To Thy children far and near:
Fear shall have no more dominion.
God is All, and heaven is here.
Hymn 374
John Randall Dunn
We thank Thee and we bless Thee,
O Father of us all,
That e'en before we ask Thee
Thou hear'st Thy children's call.
We praise Thee for Thy goodness
And tender, constant care,
We thank Thee, Father-Mother,
That Thou hast heard our prayer.
We thank Thee and we bless Thee,
O Lord of all above,
That now Thy children know Thee
As everlasting Love.
And Love is not the author
Of discord, pain and fear;
O Love divine, we thank Thee
That good alone is here.
We thank Thee, Father-Mother,
For blessings, light and grace
Which bid mankind to waken
And see Thee face to face.
We thank Thee, when in anguish
We turn from sense to Soul,
That we may hear Thee calling:
Rejoice, for thou art whole.
