Lessons

WHEN I was a boy, my school class visited an orphanage near our city. A boy about my age from the orphanage welcomed us with a piano concert. I later heard the home's director tell my teacher the boy had special musical talent, but they had no funds to give him piano lessons.

The next day I telephoned the orphanage and spoke to the director. I asked how much lessons would cost for the boy who had played during our visit. He checked, and later told me how much a local teacher would charge. It was exactly the amount of my weekly allowance for helping around our house. For ``being good all week, as my Dad put it.

I mailed my allowance each week to the orphanage for about a year, to pay for the piano lessons, until the boy left for a foster home. I never met him, but he wrote me some wonderful letters of gratitude.

I didn't think much about the piano lessons at the time, but later I wondered what had led me to get involved with someone I didn't even know. I realized that through my study of Christian Science I had been learning about God's goodness and His love for man. It was natural, then, for me to act on Christ Jesus' teaching that we should love our fellow humans. These feelings of love are natural because man's true spiritual nature is loving, generous. My grandmother used to speak of God's filled purse, symb olic of the ever-present and unlimited resources that come to man from God.

In acting on loving, generous ideas, we are not responding to mere human impulse. Such ideas are the result of a spiritual impulsion that comes from knowing God as divine Love. This is not a gift of character bestowed on some and withheld from others. Lovingkindness is natural to all of us. Each of us naturally reflects the divine Love that is God.

The Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, Mary Baker Eddy, writes in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, ``The rich in spirit help the poor in one grand brotherhood, all having the same Principle, or Father; and blessed is that man who seeth his brother's need and supplieth it, seeking his own in another's good." Love for our neighbors, wherever our eye may see them or our heart be touched by their need, is the legitimate, normal reflection of this glorious spiritual inheritance each of

us possesses as God's child.

Indeed, this law of Love not only inspires but also protects. In recent years, whenever I have been facing difficult financial challenges, I have always found help. Often it was an unexpected source--an old friend I hadn't thought of, or even a total stranger who stepped forward to help me. Thus we can all be participants in God's great love. Sometimes we're on the giving end, sometimes we're on the receiving end. But always we can witness outstretched hands and hearts every hour of our day, right when w e need them, as we pray to God.

God's great love surrounds us right now. It is right before us. We never have to wait for ``the right moment." Now is the right moment. We never need to be concerned about ``being good all week. As God's loving child, we already are good. In words of a Psalm, ``The steps of a good man are ordered by the Lord: and he delighteth in his way." Our lives can show what this means every day.

The Christian Science Sentinel, a weekly magazine, contains more articles about God's power to heal.

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