Love's cleansing power

During seasons of abundant rain some trees, under favorable conditions, generate extra amounts of sap. This serves to flush out some of the beetles and other blights that have infested a tree. This natural cleansing process, known as ''pitching out,'' leaves the tree cleaner and more vigorous.

We can experience a similar cleansing process by being so filled with love that it virtually flows out of every pore. This is possible as we recognize divine Love, God, to be our creator, the sole source of our being - our very Mind. As we yield to this infinite power, it flushes out and fills the dark areas of human thought, cascading and flowing, so to speak, over everything and everyone with whom we have contact. When our thought is immersed in Love, there is no place left for hate, fear, anxiety, resentment, envy, lust, which would bore in and infest thought. With no place in thought for a foothold, these false traits begin to disappear, and as they disappear, so do related symptoms of discord, disease, deterioration, dissatisfaction.

The correlation between the quality of one's thought -- the degree to which fallible human characteristics yield to the divine -- and one's day-to-day experience is a key point in Christian Science. Mary Baker Eddyn1 indicates this when she writes, ''Let unselfishness, goodness, mercy, justice, health, holiness , love-- the kingdom of heaven - reign within us, and sin, disease, and death will diminish until they finally disappear.''n2

n1 Mrs. Eddy is the Discover and Founder of Christian Science.

n2Science and Health with key to the Scriptures,m p. 248

Uchristly elements of thought can often be readily detected and put out. Other times they remain obscure despite one's best efforts to uncover them. In such cases, the solution doesn't lie in further probing and analyzing the human mind but in so filling our thought, through prayer, with Truth and Love that the evil is exposed and destroyed. This may take persistence and plain hard work, but it's worth the effort and, in the final analysis, inescapable.

The basis of this work is an understanding of true being as revealed in the Bible, especially in the teachings and works of Christ Jesus. The Master's career illustrated the fact that God is infinite - that there is but one God, without opposition of any kind. Jesus taught that this one God is perfect good, and on this basis he was able to dispose of evil, whatever its form. Our Way-shower also declared that God is Spirit. Therefore God is not in matter, and matter is not in God, for Spirit and matter cannot commingle.

Because man is God's image, as we learn in the first chapter of the Bible, the true identity of each of us is entirely spiritual, the expression of the divine qualities of God. In truth, then, we've never been subject to materialistic, discordant impulses. Man, as the likeness of God, has never included and can never include or express a single element of evil. What appears to the senses as an evil mortal is a false concept of man, a false view that needs correcting through the cleansing power of Love.

Hate, dissatisfaction, resentment, impatience, fear, anxiety, lust, have never really been part of any individual. As we understand and claim this fact, we bring our thought into line with the healing power of Love, with the omnipresence of Spirit. From this standpoint we can identify ourselves as offspring of all that is good and pure. We can feel this to be the reality of our being, and express love naturally, letting it overflow and embrace every situation. And we may never know how much our expression of love helps those with whom we have contact. Others feel it and are blessed by it. It may be just what is needed to lift someone out of the doldrums. Paul tells us that ''love is the fulfilling of the law.''n3

n3 Romans 13:10

We can never feel or express too much of divine Love. This Love is the great healing, cleansing, and harmonizing power. DAILY BIBLE VERSE God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind. II Timothy 1:7