Day 31

53:25-55:29

Today is the last pages of the chapter. The quote that stood out to me was:

Out of the amplitude of her pure affection, he defined Love.

So what this means to me is, that based on his demonstration of affection, he defined God since Love with a capital L in Christian Science is another word for God. So how do I demonstrate affection? By this, I assume we're not talking about some direct but generally pointless kindness like holding a door open for someone. To demonstrate affection is to say that person, no matter what they have done or where they are in there life is lovable and loved. Ok, I subscribe to the half-full glass side of the argument. Therefore I believe every life has value and the person is genuinely lovable and deserving of expressed affection. But how to demonstrate this?

It seems the answer is simple until the circumstance is not simple. That pretty much separates my response from the WWJD response. How do I bridge that divide?

So I'm still back to patience, meekness, love, and good deeds. There were other lists in this chapter but I feel like they are either on a parallel track or for the next step in my journey. If I can't demonstrate these four, how can I do any of the rest of it?

Day 30

51:28-53:24

Today's pages have several things underlined. I can tell they will consume me for a few days but here are my first thoughts.

The passage discusses the difference between what Jesus did and experienced versus everyone else:

His senses drank in the spiritual evidence of health, holiness, and life; their senses testified oppositely, and absorbed the material evidence of sin, sickness, and death.

Senses versus material evidence. Those seem like the same thing but obviously MBE doesn't mean them that way. 

The "man of sorrows" best understood [1] the nothingness of material life and intelligence and [2] the mighty actuality of all-inclusive God, good. These were the two cardinal points of Mind-healing, or Christian Science, which armed him with Love.

I noted the items with numbers so I could read it as a list.

His words and works were unknown to the world because above and contrary to the world's religious sense. Mortals believed in God as humanly mighty, rather than as divine infinite Love.

This last passage, written over a century ago is still valid. Perhaps even more so today where we have T.V., movies, and books where God is personified humanly. The image sticks and is much harder to replace with an idea such as Love.

I also noticed how two of the three quotes ended in Love. Still working on "divine Principle, Love" since that does seem to be what I need to work on. If my senses drank in the spiritual evidence of the divine Principle of Love, instead of material evidence of sin, sickness, and death, I would be on my way so I have another goal to add to my list.

Day 29

49:7-51:27

The passages today continue to deal with Jesus's death and resurrection. But the question posed on line 14 of page 50 felt more like a question to me, about me, than Jesus:

Had Life, Truth, and Love forsaken him in his highest demonstration?

You make thing it's wrong that I make a comparison but the journeys are the same. I assume the end will be different from a material standpoint but the Spiritual journey I'm after, isn't. So instead of being laid low the way I was yesterday, I feel inspired by his journey:

He was inspired by God, by Truth and Love, in all that he said and did.

I have been actively looking for ways to express Love as the divine Principle. Good deeds seem to be the easiest. Then meekness, then patience. But love, in any form is still hardest to do.  

How about you - which is hardest for you: patience, meekness, love, or good deeds?

Day 28

47:10-49:6

Some how today's topic, the death (or is it life) of Jesus is too morbid to deal with in any way except material. Nothing struck me in the passage. Nothing seemed uplifting. Or Spiritual. Just doom and destruction.

Day 27

45:22-47:9

The two passages I underlined in these pages are below. The first summarizes the reading for the day. The second points to my hope for reading it.

Jesus' unchanged physical condition after what seemed to be death was followed by his exaltation above all material conditions; and this exaltation explained his ascension, and revealed unmistakably a probationary and progressive state beyond the grave.

His students then received the Holy Ghost. By this is meant, that by all they had witnessed and suffered, they were roused to an enlarged understanding of divine Science, even to the spiritual interpretation and discernment of Jesus' teachings and demonstrations, which gave them a faint conception of the Life which is God.

I've been looking at every problem in the last two days and thinking  the divine Principle is Love. Standing porter at the door of thought with that one.

Day 26

43:21-45:21

I've been thinking a lot about why people love one another. Not family, or sexual love but the kind meant in Love Your Neighbor. Why do we love some people and not others?

In the last year, I've changed my view on love, and not for the better. It's hard to try to be loving to people when the initial response is suspicion, the second response is surprise, and the third response is fear. I don't know if that's because I live up here in the Northwest where people stay in themselves so much or that I have turned inward.

In the last year, I decided to pursue friendships and people that welcomed them and turn from relationships that didn't, regardless of the supposed proximity of that relationship. That isn't very loving. I'm saying these people aren't worth my love. How did I come to a place in my life where I can do that? I'm not happy about it. I'm just tired of being overtly, publicly criticized.

So today's passage is about Jesus and his three days after supposed death. Jesus, who loved everybody, went through a lot more than I ever will in the name of Love. How did he demonstrate Love to people who were cruel? I don't think him standing there and taking it was the demonstration. I think the internal landscape and his verbal record were his demonstration of Love.

The passages I marked in the book are:

The divine must overcome the human at every point.

Love must triumph over hate.

The persecutors had failed to hide immortal Truth and Love in a sepulchre.

...through the revelation and demonstration of life in God, [Christ] hath elevated them to possible at-one-ment with the spiritual idea of man and his divine Principle, Love.

The last bit of the last sentence caught my eye. The divine Principle is Love. If the divine principle is Love, then I have to work on that. I knew I had to and that this year reading this book would eventually get to it but some how I had procrastinated in my own thought and pushed it away. How do I love anyone including people who don't love me? The only thing that comes to thought is to see them as they truly are in God's reflection and ignore the material evidence. If I had mastered that already, or even gotten close, I wouldn't be here with the book, again.

Day 25

41:22-43:20

This passage is diving into more of the life and resurrection of Jesus. A couple of passages caught my eye:

"The truth taught by Jesus, the elders scoffed at. Why? Because it demanded more than they were willing to practise."

"Heretofore they had only believed; now they understood. The advent of this understanding is what is meant by the descent of the Holy Ghost, --that influx of divine Science which so illuminated the Pentecostal Day and is now repeating its ancient history."

These aren't really spiritual in nature but I appreciate them.

On a side note, I found a text version of S&H in the Project Gutenberg, in case someone was looking for it.