What about me?

DO you sometimes ask yourself the question ''What about me?'' when you feel unneeded because you seem to be just like everybody else, or when you feel unwanted because you seem to be in some way different?

Try thinking from the opposite standpoint, and realize the distinctness of your individuality in the all-inclusiveness of spiritual creation. God made you. God loves you. God needs you. You are, in truth, His blessed spiritual likeness, not an unwanted mortal, regardless of appearances.

And what about other people? God loves all His offspring, and each one is indispensable to the full expression of the divine nature. To realize this is to gain a sense of belonging that makes room for everyone.

People can feel shut out in many different ways. But there's always room for intelligence, and for love and integrity. Everyone welcomes these qualities. Each can express them in his own unique way.

It's limited, self-centered thinking that shuts out. Expansive, God-centered thinking opens up new possibilities, new views. Self-centered thinking tends to foster self-depreciation, self-pity, self-condemnation-or, on the other hand, self-satisfaction and self-justification. Either way, such thinking goes round and round. Even changing the question ''What about me?'' to ''What about all of us?'' is a good beginning.

Christ Jesus always thought of himself as God's beloved Son. But he didn't claim sonship exclusively for himself. He extended it to everyone else as well. As a result, the sick, the delinquent, the hungry, the poor, the social outcast, were healed, fed, comforted. This illustrates the power and availability of infinite divine wisdom and love.

John's Gospel says of Jesus, ''As many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name: which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.''n1 And Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, writes, commenting on this text: ''Here, the apostle assures us that man has power to become the son of God.'' On the next page she says, ''Is man's spiritual sonship a personal gift to man, or is it the reality of his being, in divine Science? Man's knowledge of this grand verity gives him power to demonstrate his divine Principle, which in turn is requisite in order to understand his sonship, or unity with God, good.'' And still farther along she continues, ''His sonship, referred to in the text, is his spiritual relation to Deity: it is not, then, a personal gift, but is the order of divine Science.'' n 2

n1 John 1:12, 13.

n2 Miscellaneous Writings, pp. 180-181.

And what about the receptivity to truth on which our proof of sonship hinges? How can we cultivate that? To be receptive is to have an open, expectant thought, unclouded by doubt, scepticism, cynicism, and defeatism. We really can accept the fact of our spiritual individuality, refusing to believe that the limited material personality we seem to be is who we really are.

God's man isn't a fleshly personality. He isn't a mortal just like millions of other mortals, or a mortal embarrassed by some dissimilarity. Each one of us , in his actual selfhood, is God's cherished spiritual offspring. And each one is needed, because if one identity were missing, then God's creation would be to that extent incomplete.

Nobody need suffer because someone else succeeds. Success for one should only hold out greater expectancy of comparable satisfaction for everyone else. The more we express of our true individuality, the better for everyone.

Jesus once said to a blind man, ''Receive thy sight.'' n3 And the continuing power of the universal, healing Christ is still saying to each one of us: ''Receive your health. Receive abundance of good. Open thought to your own wonderful spiritual individuality.'' It's the recognition of that individuality as well as the appreciation of it in others that enables us to answer correctly the question ''What about me?''

n3 Luke 18:42.

DAILY BIBLE VERSE Humble yourselves threrfore under the mighty hand of Hod, that he may exalt you in due time: Casting all your care upon him; for he careth for you. I Peter 5:6, 7