Life Governed By the Stars?

MANY of us have seen newspaper columns that make predictions about people according to the sign of the zodiac they were born under. There is enough emphasis on astrology these days to make us ask ourselves whether these "signs have any power over us. Can the positions of the stars at our birth really predict what we are and will be?I was thinking about this the other day when I came across an arresting statement in the book of Psalms. The writer speaks of God's glory and then goes on to say, "When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained; what is man, that thou art mindful of him? I was struck also by the verses that followed. One states of man: "Thou madest him to have dominion over the works of thy hands; thou hast put all things under his feet. The man of God's creating would not be subject to anyone but his divine Father. In other words, the "stars would have no power over him, because God, being the creator, is the only power. If we look at the life of Christ Jesus, we begin to find abundant evidence of God's presence in individual human life. Although the Gospels tell of the specially bright star that shone in the heavens at Jesus' birth, we never read that the Master alluded to it in his teachings. And he didn't offer it as a proof that he was the Messiah, or Saviour. Instead, Jesus proved his Messiahship through healing and restoring mankind. And in doing this, he turned people away from material conditions to spiritual facts. He taught that God is Spirit and that the man He creates is spiritual as His likeness. Then it follows that to understand truly who we are, we must think of ourselves in these spiritual terms, rather than within the narrow framework of a finite, material sphere. The distinction is important because it determines what we will allow to have control over us. If we accept the belief that we are material entities, living within a frame of reference that is based on birth, decay, and death, we may well feel that many things other than God have power over us. Christ Jesus offered us a totally different view of ourselves. It is one based on the fact that God is Love, and that man is the image of divine Love. From this standpoint, man is not subject to material force s or limited to the good they may seem to offer. Instead, he has full access to the total goodness God gives. Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, makes this point in her book Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures. She writes, "The planets have no more power over man than over his Maker, since God governs the universe; but man, reflecting God's power, has dominion over all the earth and its hosts. This dominion means that we aren't locked into a material outline of how our lives must proceed. Instead, we can experience God's love, guiding us toward the freedom and certainty of God's power that Jesus expressed. In actuality, the Master's whole ministry gave proof that human lives can be redeemed. Sinners were saved, the hopelessly ill were cured--even the dead were raised through the Master's spiritual understanding of the Christ, Truth, he exemplified. In short, then, we don't have to accept the negative predictions our horoscopes would lay out for us. Nor do we need to believe that the good in our lives is limited. As we come to know God better and obey His scientific laws as the Master did, we can trust His infinite good to be ours. Then we will increasingly have the kind of spiritual dominion that Jesus had.