What's new?

Perhaps it was the Bible verse I read one morning admonishing me to "put on the new man" n1 that made me seriously ask myself what really was new about this day other than the number on the calendar. Then I thought of the Scriptural vese: "It is of the Lord's mercies that we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not. They are new every morning." n2 There was my answer.

n1 Colossians 3:10;

n2 Lamentations 3:22, 23;

Did this mean I wouldn't have to continue limping through another day because of a recent ankle sprain? I recalled a passage from the writings of Mary Baker Eddy, n3 "Under divine Providence there can be no accidents, since there is no room for imperfection in perfection." n4 A related Bible verse I found read, "When I said, My foot slippeth; thy mercy, O Lord, held me up." n5

n3 Mrs. Eddy is the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science;

n4 Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures,m p. 424;

n5 Psalms 94:18;

Those passages sounded as though they had been written for me, and i was determined to prove them.If God's mercies are new every morning, I could carry out my daily duties without limitation or soreness.

Soon I found myself walking normally, and I even topped off the day with a swim. The healing was complete.

How thankful I was! More than restoration of my mobility, I had glimpsed the fact that my perfection as a child of God had really been there all along. Christ Jesus had healed by showing man's innate wholeness -- a truth that, because the Master understood it so thoroughly, brought about health and normalcy. My healing was based on the same truth. Such evidence of God's love for us is for all time -- and is new every day.

How easy it is to carry encrusted thoughts around with us day after day --thoughts based on the so-called wisdom of the ages. These often represent the world's misinformation, pooled and passed on.

But Mrs. Eddy writes in Science and Health,m "I saw that the law of mortal belief included all error, and that, even as oppressive laws are disputed and mortals are taught their right to freedom, so the claims of the enslaving senses must be denied and superseded." n6

n6 Science and Healthm p. 227.

The act of denying and superseding represents, to me, the casting out of the old and the adoption of the new -- the claiming of divine Truth to be true for us. We can daily, hourly, replace the lies that come to us about ourselves and our world (the claims that man is mortal and sinful, that the universe is self-destructive and often hostile) with the fact that God's creation is perfect. This truth is found in the Bible. We read in the first chapter of Genesis of the creation of God's flawless universe -- of God who made and saw good everywhere. This spiritual law of God's all-goodness and man's perfection knows no season.It is boundless and cannot be revoked or used up.

Improvements made by a new city council, the carrying out of a New Year's resolution, and the success of the newly appointed basketball coach all depend on the adoption of correct thoughts. The popular and proverbial do not always serve us well.Why couldn't someone have reached the moon years ago? A change in thinking was at the root of this accomplishment.

It's never too late to replace old thinking with new -- in the deepest sense, to comprehend more of God as man's perpetually fresh source of being, and of our true nature as Deity's reflection.

The sign on a waste disposal basket in a public park reminded me recently of what all of us should do daily. Under the printed message, "Do the right things ," was the stick figure of a man throwing trash into the basket. How appropriate, I thought. Not only do we need to keep our parks clean by the regular disposal of worthless objects, but we need to keep our mental house clear of wrong thoughts of every kind. This needs our daily attention, since the thoughts we accept determine our experience.

It's marvelous to know that each day brings new opportunities to prove God's supremacy and man's faultless nature. DAILY BIBLE VER SE If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature. II Corinthians 5:17