Theme: Reflection
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.
Readings from the Bible.
Deuteronomy 4:39,40
Know therefore this day, and consider it in thine heart, that the Lord he is God in heaven above, and upon the earth beneath: there is none else. Thou shalt keep therefore his statutes, and his commandments, which I command thee this day, that it may go well with thee, and with thy children after thee, and that thou mayest prolong thy days upon the earth, which the Lord thy God giveth thee, for ever.
Deuteronomy 8:5‑10
Thou shalt also consider in thine heart, that, as a man chasteneth his son, so the Lord thy God chasteneth thee. Therefore thou shalt keep the commandments of the Lord thy God, to walk in his ways, and to fear him. For the Lord thy God bringeth thee into a good land, a land of brooks of water, of fountains and depths that spring out of valleys and hills; A land of wheat, and barley, and vines, and fig trees, and pomegranates; a land of oil olive, and honey; A land wherein thou shalt eat bread without scarceness, thou shalt not lack any thing in it; a land whose stones are iron, and out of whose hills thou mayest dig brass. When thou hast eaten and art full, then thou shalt bless the Lord thy God for the good land which he hath given thee.
Psalms 5:1‑4
Give ear to my words, O Lord, consider my meditation. Hearken unto the voice of my cry, my King, and my God: for unto thee will I pray. My voice shalt thou hear in the morning, O Lord; in the morning will I direct my prayer unto thee, and will look up. For thou art not a God that hath pleasure in wickedness: neither shall evil dwell with thee.
Psalms 119:159,160
Consider how I love thy precepts: quicken me, O Lord, according to thy lovingkindness. Thy word is true from the beginning: and every one of thy righteous judgments endureth for ever.
Isaiah 41:13 I the,18‑20
I the Lord thy God will hold thy right hand, saying unto thee, Fear not; I will help thee.
I will open rivers in high places, and fountains in the midst of the valleys: I will make the wilderness a pool of water, and the dry land springs of water. I will plant in the wilderness the cedar, the shittah tree, and the myrtle, and the oil tree; I will set in the desert the fir tree, and the pine, and the box tree together: That they may see, and know, and consider, and understand together, that the hand of the Lord hath done this, and the Holy One of Israel hath created it.
Matthew 6:24‑33
#No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon. Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than meat, and the body than raiment? Behold the fowls of the air: for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are ye not much better than they? Which of you by taking thought can add one cubit unto his stature? And why take ye thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin: And yet I say unto you, That even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. Wherefore, if God so clothe the grass of the field, which to day is, and to morrow is cast into the oven, shall he not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith? Therefore take no thought, saying, What shall we eat? or, What shall we drink? or, Wherewithal shall we be clothed? (For after all these things do the Gentiles seek:) for your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things. But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.
II Timothy 2:7
Consider what I say; and the Lord give thee understanding in all things.
Hebrews 10:23,24
Let us hold fast the profession of our faith without wavering; (for he is faithful that promised;) And let us consider one another to provoke unto love and to good works:
Readings from Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy
125:12‑7
As human thought changes from one stage to another of conscious pain and painlessness, sorrow and joy,‑‑from fear to hope and from faith to understanding,‑‑the visible manifestation will at last be man governed by Soul, not by material sense. Reflecting God's government, man is self‑governed. When subordinate to the divine Spirit, man cannot be controlled by sin or death, thus proving our material theories about laws of health to be valueless.
The seasons will come and go with changes of time and tide, cold and heat, latitude and longitude. The agriculturist will find that these changes cannot affect his crops. "As a vesture shalt Thou change them and they shall be changed." The mariner will have dominion over the atmosphere and the great deep, over the fish of the sea and the fowls of the air. The astronomer will no longer look up to the stars,‑‑he will look out from them upon the universe; and the florist will find his flower before its seed.
Thus matter will finally be proved nothing more than a mortal belief, wholly inadequate to affect a man through its supposed organic action or supposed existence. Error will be no longer used in stating truth. The problem of nothingness, or "dust to dust," will be solved, and mortal mind will be without form and void, for mortality will cease when man beholds himself God's reflection, even as man sees his reflection in a glass.
200:16
The great truth in the Science of being, that the real man was, is, and ever shall be perfect, is incontrovertible; for if man is the image, reflection, of God, he is neither inverted nor subverted, but upright and Godlike.
242:9
There is but one way to heaven, harmony, and Christ in divine Science shows us this way. It is to know no other reality‑‑to have no other consciousness of life‑‑than good, God and His reflection, and to rise superior to the so‑called pain and pleasure of the senses.
258:9‑24
Man is more than a material form with a mind inside, which must escape from its environments in order to be immortal. Man reflects infinity, and this reflection is the true idea of God.
God expresses in man the infinite idea forever developing itself, broadening and rising higher and higher from a boundless basis. Mind manifests all that exists in the infinitude of Truth. We know no more of man as the true divine image and likeness, than we know of God.
The infinite Principle is reflected by the infinite idea and spiritual individuality, but the material so‑called senses have no cognizance of either Principle or its idea. The human capacities are enlarged and perfected in proportion as humanity gains the true conception of man and God.
259:6
In divine Science, man is the true image of God. The divine nature was best expressed in Christ Jesus, who threw upon mortals the truer reflection of God and lifted their lives higher than their poor thought‑models would allow,‑‑thoughts which presented man as fallen, sick, sinning, and dying. The Christlike understanding of scientific being and divine healing includes a perfect Principle and idea,‑‑perfect God and perfect man,‑‑as the basis of thought and demonstration.
281:7‑17
Error presupposes man to be both mind and matter. Divine Science contradicts the corporeal senses, rebukes mortal belief, and asks: What is the Ego, whence its origin and what its destiny? The Ego‑man is the reflection of the Ego‑God; the Ego‑man is the image and likeness of perfect Mind, Spirit, divine Principle.
The one Ego, the one Mind or Spirit called God, is infinite individuality, which supplies all form and comeliness and which reflects reality and divinity in individual spiritual man and things.
300:1‑12
Human logic is awry when it attempts to draw correct spiritual conclusions regarding life from matter. Finite sense has no true appreciation of infinite Principle, God, or of His infinite image or reflection, man. The mirage, which makes trees and cities seem to be where they are not, illustrates the illusion of material man, who cannot be the image of God.
So far as the scientific statement as to man is understood, it can be proved and will bring to light the true reflection of God‑‑the real man, or the ^new^ man (as St. Paul has it).
305:5‑30
A picture in the camera or a face reflected in the mirror is not the original, though resembling it. Man, in the likeness of his Maker, reflects the central light of being, the invisible God. As there is no corporeality in the mirrored form, which is but a reflection, so man, like all things real, reflects God, his divine Principle, not in a mortal body.
Gender also is a quality, not of God, but a characteristic of mortal mind. The verity that God's image is not a creator, though he reflects the creation of Mind, God, constitutes the underlying reality of reflection. "Then answered Jesus and said unto them: Verily, verily I say unto you, the Son can do nothing of himself, but what he seeth the Father do: for what things soever He doeth, these also doeth the Son likewise."
The inverted images presented by the senses, the deflections of matter as opposed to the Science of spiritual reflection, are all unlike Spirit, God. In the illusion of life that is here to‑day and gone to‑morrow, man would be wholly mortal, were it not that Love, the divine Principle that obtains in divine Science, destroys all error and brings immortality to light. Because man is the reflection of his Maker, he is not subject to birth, growth, maturity, decay. These mortal dreams are of human origin, not divine.
306:7‑20
Life demonstrates Life. The immortality of Soul makes man immortal. If God, who is Life, were parted for a moment from His reflection, man, during that moment there would be no divinity reflected. The Ego would be unexpressed, and the Father would be childless,‑‑no Father. If Life or Soul and its representative, man, unite for a period and then are separated as by a law of divorce to be brought together again at some uncertain future time and in a manner unknown,‑‑and this is the general religious opinion of mankind,‑‑we are left without a rational proof of immortality. But man cannot be separated for an instant from God, if man reflects God. Thus Science proves man's existence to be intact.
333:16 The
The advent of Jesus of Nazareth marked the first century of the Christian era, but the Christ is without beginning of years or end of days. Throughout all generations both before and after the Christian era, the Christ, as the spiritual idea,‑‑the reflection of God,‑‑has come with some measure of power and grace to all prepared to receive Christ, Truth. Abraham, Jacob, Moses, and the prophets caught glorious glimpses of the Messiah, or Christ, which baptized these seers in the divine nature, the essence of Love. The divine image, idea, or Christ was, is, and ever will be inseparable from the divine Principle, God. Jesus referred to this unity of his spiritual identity thus: "Before Abraham was, I am;" "I and my Father are one;" "My Father is greater than I." The one Spirit includes all identities.
470:21‑5
God is the creator of man, and, the divine Principle of man remaining perfect, the divine idea or reflection, man, remains perfect. Man is the expression of God's being. If there ever was a moment when man did not express the divine perfection, then there was a moment when man did not express God, and consequently a time when Deity was unexpressed‑‑that is, without entity. If man has lost perfection, then he has lost his perfect Principle, the divine Mind. If man ever existed without this perfect Principle or Mind, then man's existence was a myth.
The relations of God and man, divine Principle and idea, are indestructible in Science; and Science knows no lapse from nor return to harmony, but holds the divine order or spiritual law, in which God and all that He creates are perfect and eternal, to have remained unchanged in its eternal history.
471:13‑20
The facts of divine Science should be admitted,‑‑although the evidence as to these facts is not supported by evil, by matter, or by material sense,‑‑because the evidence that God and man coexist is fully sustained by spiritual sense. Man is, and forever has been, God's reflection. God is infinite, therefore ever present, and there is no other power nor presence. Hence the spirituality of the universe is the only fact of creation.
515:16‑23 np
The eternal Elohim includes the forever universe. The name Elohim is in the plural, but this plurality of Spirit does not imply more than one God, nor does it imply three persons in one. It relates to the oneness, the tri‑unity of Life, Truth, and Love. "Let ^them^ have dominion." Man is the family name for all ideas,‑‑the sons and daughters of God. All that God imparts moves in accord with Him, reflecting goodness and power.
Your mirrored reflection is your own image or likeness. If you lift a weight, your reflection does this also. If you speak, the lips of this likeness move in accord with yours. Now compare man before the mirror to his divine Principle, God. Call the mirror divine Science, and call man the reflection. Then note how true, according to Christian Science, is the reflection to its original. As the reflection of yourself appears in the mirror, so you, being spiritual, are the reflection of God. The substance, Life, intelligence, Truth, and Love, which constitute Deity, are reflected by His creation; and when we subordinate the false testimony of the corporeal senses to the facts of Science, we shall see this true likeness and reflection everywhere.
God fashions all things, after His own likeness. Life is reflected in existence, Truth in truthfulness, God in goodness, which impart their own peace and permanence. Love, redolent with unselfishness, bathes all in beauty and light. The grass beneath our feet silently exclaims, "The meek shall inherit the earth." The modest arbutus sends her sweet breath to heaven. The great rock gives shadow and shelter. The sunlight glints from the church‑dome, glances into the prison‑cell, glides into the sick‑chamber, brightens the flower, beautifies the landscape, blesses the earth. Man, made in His likeness, possesses and reflects God's dominion over all the earth. Man and woman as coexistent and eternal with God forever reflect, in glorified quality, the infinite Father‑Mother God.
Silent prayer, followed by the audible repetition of the Lord’s Prayer.
Hymn 371
Margaret Morrison
We lift our hearts in praise,
O God of Life, to Thee,
And would reflect in all our ways
Thy purity.
Thy thoughts our lives enfold,
And free us from all fear;
All strife is stilled, all grief consoled,
For Thou art here.
We lift our hearts in praise,
O God of Truth, to Thee,
And find within Thy perfect law
Our liberty.
We bless Thy mighty name
In this exalted hour,
And to the world in faith proclaim
Thy healing power.
We lift our hearts in praise,
O God of Love, to Thee,
With joy to find through darkened days
Thy harmony.
O Father‑Mother Love,
We triumph 'neath Thy rod,
We glory in Thy light, and prove
That Thou art God.
Sharing of experiences, testimonies and remarks by members of the congregation.
Hymn 206
Duncan Sinclair
O God, our Father‑Mother, Love,
Purge Thou our hearts from sin,
That in Thy radiancy divine
We may with eyes undimmed define
Thy will, reality.
O God, our Father‑Mother, Truth,
Send forth Thy light sublime,
That in its pure and cleansing rays
We may, with thought attuned to praise,
Behold reality.
O God, our Father‑Mother, Life,
Reveal in us Thy might,
That henceforth we may live to Thee,
In all our ways reflecting Thee,
And know reality.
