Being more useful
IT was an unhappy friend who sat across from me the other day at lunch. This man was feeling frustrated with his job, wishing he had more clients who would make use of his training and expertise. Many people have a desire to express their particular abilities in a satisfying, purposeful way. We each can lead a fuller, more useful life, whatever our line of endeavor may be, no matter what challenges we may be facing.
Instead of wasting time waiting for opportunity to knock at the door of their lives, people can wake up to the fact that bountiful good lies within their grasp now. Christ Jesus said, ``The kingdom of God is within you.''1 And this is just where opportunity is, too.
This kingdom of good, this absolute reign of God, divine Principle, is not dependent on people, places, or events. It is intact--within the true consciousness of each of us, which is a reflection of God Himself, of the one perfect Mind. We can begin to discern this reality through prayer and through a spiritual understanding of God and man.
As we can learn from the Bible, man is actually the spiritual image of God. He is the loved likeness of divine Love. This realization helps us to turn radically away from the discouraging view of inactivity or frustration. It encourages us to accept the spiritual fact that because God is infinite, ever-active good, man, His image, must be continuously expressing that good in satisfying activity.
In assuring mankind of God's tender relationship to each of His offspring, and of man's spiritual value, Jesus said: ``Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing? and one of them shall not fall on the ground without your Father. But the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear ye not therefore, ye are of more value than many sparrows.''2 Each and every one of us is important, useful, individual, because we are all God's beloved offspring, made in His image.
Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, writes in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures: ``If God, who is Life, were parted for a moment from His reflection, man, during that moment there would be no divinity reflected. The Ego would be unexpresed, and the Father would be childless,--no Father.''3
As an individual grows in the understanding of man's unity with his Maker, he comes to realize that he can't be forgotten, lost in the crowd; he can't be deprived of God-given avenues for self-expression.
Nothing brings opportunity to one's door quicker than the desire to be useful to God and to one's fellow beings. With this holy aspiration even the most under-utilized person will find his life blossoming into activity that blesses more widely than he imagined. No matter how desolate one's circumstances may sometimes seem, they can be turned completely around as he begins to understand his actual, spiritual nature and strives wholeheartedly to reflect the divine will.
Finding out who we really are, and accepting that wonderful fact, enable us to express more of good, more of God, in everything we do. This is the way of our salvation, and is therefore, inescapably, where success lies.
Man exists to bear witness to God, to reflect Him in every way. Man's purpose or activity, then, is not actually at the disposal of individuals, places, or time. As we know ourselves to be God's perfect child, we see that the opportunity to lead a meaningful life can never really be absent. As the Bible assures us, ``God is able to make all grace abound toward you; that ye, always having all sufficiency in all things, may abound to every good work.''4
1Luke 17:21. 2Matthew 10:29-31. 3Science and Health, p. 306. 4II Corinthians 9:8. DAILY BIBLE VERSE Now our Lord Jesus Christ himself, and God, even our Fatehr, which hath loved us, and hath given us everlasting consolation and good hope through grace, comfort your hearts, and stablish you in every good word and work. II Thessalonians 2:16, 17
