Sunday, July 20th, 2025 Roundtable
Hold Yourself Open to the Plans of God
This week’s Lesson Sermon Subject: Life
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Morning Prayer
Life in matter is a dream: sin, sickness, and death are this dream. Life is Spirit; and when we waken from the dream of life in matter, we shall learn this grand truth of being. St. John saw the vision of life in matter; and he saw it pass away, — an illusion. … Let us remember that God — good — is omnipotent; therefore evil is impotent. There is but one side to good, — it has no evil side; there is but one side to reality, and that is the good side.
God is All, and in all: that finishes the question of a good and a bad side to existence. Truth is the real; error is the unreal.
from Christian Healing, by Mary Baker Eddy, pages 9 to 10
For Love alone is Life;
from Miscellaneous Writings, by Mary Baker Eddy, page 388
Daily Watch
295 — WATCH lest you mistake a growing indifference to and lessening interest in material things and world events, for an evidence of spiritual growth….
This is God’s universe, even though it appears to be distorted into matter when viewed through material sense. Spiritual growth shows itself in an increasing alertness and activity, a keen interest in everything good. Mrs. Eddy’s growth was evident in her tremendous activity of thought, her careful and watchful attention to details even at an advanced age. She never lost her interest in life. She was interested in current events and world affairs up to the end of her human span. She never relaxed in her determination not to permit one error to escape detection or to go unrebuked.
The reflection of divine Mind is strength, not weakness; activity, not passivity; keenness, not dullness; a love for humanity that is so alive and energetic that it prompts man to make every right effort to continue living on earth as long as possible, in order to help poor humanity and ignorant sufferers to find the way to freedom. This is God’s universe, and if we are daily reflecting Him, we will not lose interest in it, nor will we rest until we have completely spiritualized our conception of all things.
Discussion points
Golden Text: Psalm 27 : 1
“The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? the Lord is the strength of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?”
Leo Tolstoy and Mary Baker Eddy, from Noteworthy News
Light: understanding and wisdom, Life, Illumination of mind; instruction; In Scripture, God, the source of knowledge. — Webster 1828
Salvation: The act of saving; preservation from destruction, danger or great calamity. …the redemption of man from the bondage of sin ….and the conferring on him everlasting happiness, victory — Webster 1828
Strength: Firmness, Power or vigor, Power of resisting attacks; fastness; Power of mind; Soundness, Fortification; fortress; as an inaccessible strength — Webster 1828
Benson commentary. The Lord is my light — My counsellor in my difficulties, and my comforter and deliverer in all my distresses. David’s subjects called him the light of Israel; but he owns he shone, as the moon doth, with a borrowed light: the light which God communicated to him reflected upon them. God is our light, as he shows us the state we are in by nature and practice, and that into which we may and must be brought by grace, in order to our salvation. As our light, he shows us the way in which we must walk, and gives us comfort in walking therein: shows us the hinderances that are in our way, the difficulties, and enemies, and oppositions, we have to encounter, and how we may be enabled to overcome them. It is only in his light that we now proceed on in our Christian course, and it is in his light that we hope to see light for ever. And my salvation — In whom I am safe, and by whom I am and shall be saved. The Lord is the strength of my life — The protector of my exposed life, who keeps me from being slain, and the supporter of my weak and frail life, by whom I am upheld and preserved in being. God, who is a believer’s life, is the strength of his life: not only the person by whom, but in whom he lives.
Responsive Reading: Psalm 27 : 3-5, 8, 11, 13 • Psalm 23 : 6
3. Though an host should encamp against me, my heart shall not fear: though war should rise against me, in this will I be confident.
4. One thing have I desired of the Lord, that will I seek after; that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the Lord, and to inquire in his temple.
5. For in the time of trouble he shall hide me in his pavilion: in the secret of his tabernacle shall he hide me: he shall set me up upon a rock.
8. When thou saidst, Seek ye my face; my heart said unto thee, Thy face, Lord, will I seek.
11. Teach me thy way, O Lord, and lead me in a plain path, because of mine enemies.
13. I had fainted, unless I had believed to see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.
6. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.
True Inquiry by Violet Ker Seymer
“Only Good Is Contagious” September 2021 issue of Love is the Liberator
14. 167 : 6-10
We apprehend Life in divine Science only as we live above corporeal sense and correct it. Our proportionate admission of the claims of good or of evil determines the harmony of our existence, — our health, our longevity, and our Christianity.
11. 385
Constant toil, deprivations, exposures, and all untoward conditions, if without sin, can be experienced without suffering. Whatever it is your duty to do, you can do without harm to yourself. If you sprain the muscles or wound the flesh, your remedy is at hand. Mind decides whether or not the flesh shall be discolored, painful, swollen, and inflamed.
13. 199 : 8 (Muscles)-14
Muscles are not self-acting. If mind does not move them, they are motionless. Hence the great fact that Mind alone enlarges and empowers man through its mandate, — by reason of its demand for and supply of power. Not because of muscular exercise, but by reason of the blacksmith’s faith in exercise, his arm becomes stronger.
6. 407 : 21-28
If delusion says, “I have lost my memory,” contradict it. No faculty of Mind is lost. In Science, all being is eternal, spiritual, perfect, harmonious in every action. Let the perfect model be present in your thoughts instead of its demoralized opposite. This spiritualization of thought lets in the light, and brings the divine Mind, Life not death, into your consciousness.
Thy Will Be Done, from the November 7, 1903 issue of the Christian Science Sentinel by J. R. Mosley
The obstacle that makes the faint heart sink may be only a trial of faith. The majority report of the spies that made Israel turn back from entering the Promised Land was not a divine direction. Caleb and Joshua had the mind of the Lord, and it was the duty of Israel, in spite of the giants, to go up and possess the land. When there seems to be a divine thwarting we are to take counsel of our courage and not of our fears.—The Watchman.
Religious Items from the July 3, 1902 issue of the Christian Science Sentinel
The promised land of holiness is before every one of us. The Christian generations which have preceded us have all been spies for us, bringing tidings of the hardness of the way, but all uniting on the goodness of the land and the blessedness of its conditions. Now, as in the days of old, there are Calebs and Joshuas on the one hand and faint hearts on the other, but now, as then, God is with those who are bound to overcome and who will conquer in His sign. — The Christian Advocate.
The Watchman says: “It is the tendency of fear to magnify dangers and obstacles. The ten spies saw everything in an exaggerated form. Every man was a mighty giant, every city strongly fortified. But they forgot that the Omnipotent would have gone with them to the battle. And we may be sure that, if we go forward in the path God marks out for us, in confident reliance upon Him, He will give us strength and wisdom for every need.”
Rev. A. E. Dunning writes in The Congregationalist: “The Bible mirrors human experience. Therefore it never grows obsolete. Every generation sees its journeys pictured in the approach of the Israelites to the promised land, and their defeat on its borders. But Moses and Caleb and Joshua still rise up as leaders, and the spirit which makes them strong and patient and triumphant is the spirit which the Bible tells us is of God.” —The Examiner.
Religious Items from the September 18, 1902 issue of the Christian Science Sentinel
Florence Nightingale said: “If I could give you information of my life, it would be to show how a woman of very ordinary ability has been led by God in strange and unaccustomed paths to do in His service what He has done in her. And if I could tell you all, you would see how God has done all, and I nothing. I have worked hard, very hard, that is all; and I have never refused God anything.”
Religious Items from the February 20, 1902 issue of the Christian Science Sentinel
from Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, by Mary Baker Eddy, pages 244 to 248
Immortality Brought to Light by Dorothy Rieke