Service for Sunday, April 11, 2010

Subject: Are Sin, Disease and Death 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.

The scriptural selections are from Psalms.

Psalms 36:5-10

Thy mercy, O Lord, is in the heavens; and thy faithfulness reacheth unto the clouds. Thy righteousness is like the great mountains; thy judgments are a great deep: O Lord, thou preservest man and beast. How excellent is thy lovingkindness, O God! therefore the children of men put their trust under the shadow of thy wings. They shall be abundantly satisfied with the fatness of thy house; and thou shalt make them drink of the river of thy pleasures. For with thee is the fountain of life: in thy light shall we see light. O continue thy lovingkindness unto them that know thee; and thy righteousness to the upright in heart.

Psalms 43:1-3,5

Judge me, O God, and plead my cause against an ungodly nation: O deliver me from the deceitful and unjust man. For thou art the God of my strength: why dost thou cast me off? why go I mourning because of the oppression of the enemy? O send out thy light and thy truth: let them lead me; let them bring me unto thy holy hill, and to thy tabernacles.

Why art thou cast down, O my soul? and why art thou disquieted within me? hope in God: for I shall yet praise him, who is the health of my countenance, and my God.

Psalms 139:17,18

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.

Silent Prayer, followed by the Lord’s Prayer with its spiritual interpretation as given in the Christian Science Textbook, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, by Mary Baker Eddy.

Our Father which art in heaven,

Our Father-Mother God, all-harmonious,

Hallowed be Thy name.

Adorable One.

Thy kingdom come.

Thy kingdom is come; Thou art ever-present.

Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven.

Enable us to know – as in heaven, so on earth

God is omnipotent, supreme.

Give us this day our daily bread;

Give us grace for today; feed the famished affections;

And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.

And Love is reflected in love;

And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil;

And God leadeth us not into temptation, but delivereth us from sin, disease, and death.

For Thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever.

For God is infinite, all-power, all Life, Truth, Love, over all, and All..

Hymn 412

Rosa M. Turner

O dreamer, leave thy dreams for joyful waking,

O captive, rise and sing, for thou art free;

The Christ is here, all dreams of error breaking,

Unloosing bonds of all captivity.

He comes to bless thee on his wings of healing;

To banish pain, and wipe all tears away;

He comes anew, to humble hearts revealing

The mounting footsteps of the upward way.

He comes to give thee joy for desolation,

Beauty for ashes of the vanished years;

For every tear to bring full compensation,

To give thee confidence for all thy fears.

He comes to call the dumb to joyful singing;

The deaf to hear; the blinded eyes to see;

The glorious tidings of salvation bringing.

O captive, rise, thy Saviour comes to thee.

.Solo: “Bless the Lord, O My Soul”

The Lesson-Sermon as outlined in the Christian Science Quarterly and read by the First and Second Readers.

The content of the Lesson Sermons may be found in the Christian Science Quarterly. You may also read the Lesson-Sermon for this week online by clicking here.

Hymn 287

Edith Gaddis Brewer

Prayer with our waking thought ascends,

Great God of light, to Thee;

Darkness is banished in the glow

Of Thy reality.

Lo, to our widening vision dawns

The realm of Soul supreme,

Faith-lighted peaks of Spirit stand

Revealed in morning's beam.

Thus in Thy radiance vanishes

Death's drear and gloomy night;

Thus all creation hears anew

Truth's call, Let there be light.

"The Scientific Statement of Being" (S&H p. 468} and the correlative scripture according to I John 3:1-3.

There is no life, truth, intelligence, nor substance in matter. All is infinite Mind and its infinite manifestation, for God is All-in-all. Spirit is immortal Truth; matter is mortal error. Spirit is the real and eternal; matter is the unreal and temporal. Spirit is God, and man is His image and likeness. Therefore man is not material; he is spiritual.

Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p.468

1John.3

[1] Behold, what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons of God: therefore the world knoweth us not, because it knew him not.

[2] Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is.

[3] And every man that hath this hope in him purifieth himself, even as he is pure.

Benediction

Ephesians 5:14 (Awake)

Awake thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light.