Spiritual Completeness

HOW we limit ourselves! ``I don't have . . . .'' ``I can't . . . . '' Yet the Bible assures us that man, created in God's likeness, is perfect and complete. And when we trust God, we lack nothing. As we read in the familiar twenty-third Psalm: ``The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want'' (verse 1). And elsewhere the Psalmist says: ``They that seek the Lord shall not want any good thing'' (Psalms 34:10).

Jesus certainly did not accept any incompleteness, whether the need was for physical healing or food for a multitude. And today Christian Science shows how to make these Biblical teachings practical in our present experience. The basic need is not for material things but for spiritual qualities and ideas. Availing ourselves of the spiritual ideas God gives us enables us to meet all our needs. God is the divine Principle of man and the universe. And man, the expression of God, is the complete manifestation of all that God includes.

We would never believe that honesty is in limited supply. Honesty is a God-derived quality that is always available for man to express. No one can lack it, and no one has a monopoly on it. And this is just as true of all the other qualities we have as God's reflection--love, peace, joy, intelligence, and so forth. We might say that because we are completely spiritual, we are spiritually complete.

We have infinite resources--spiritual resources--on which we can constantly draw. When we think of anyone (including ourselves) as ``needing'' to be more loving, thoughtful, alert, we can remind ourselves of the spiritual facts of man's true being--already complete, lacking nothing.

Our completeness is not dependent upon a situation or a person. Recognizing this assures us that we are not incomplete if we have one job rather than another, or even no job; that racial prejudices can't stifle our opportunities; that marriage is not a source of completeness. Nor can the death of a family member or a friend take away our completeness any more than it could take away our honesty or our love. Remember, it was just before the crucifixion that Christ Jesus reminded his disciples, ``Your joy no man taketh from you'' (John 16:22).

Time cannot diminish our completeness. We exist in a state of ``isness,'' not time and age. Because we are constituted of spiritual qualities, we have a built-in maintenance, out of reach of deterioration or retrogression. We do not progress from a mortal stage to that of an immortal. What appears as growth and progression is our increasing awareness of what has always been spiritually true. It is the law of divine completeness being manifested in our human experience.

Completeness is not just a theoretical or intellectual concept. It is practical and provable in our everyday lives. Having even a glimpse of their spiritual completeness, and thinking from that standpoint, for example, people engaged in business are on the right track to solving their problems. They can expect to find ideas that will provide the workers they need and the market for what they have to offer. When approached from the standpoint of man's completeness, all of our activities involve spiritual qualities of thought, which are never lacking.

How well Mrs. Eddy, the Founder of the Church of Christ, Scientist, states it in her book Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures. She writes, ``Man is God's reflection, needing no cultivation, but ever beautiful and complete'' (p. 527). We can't ask for more--or have less!

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
QR Code to Spiritual Completeness
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/1993/1026/26171.html
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe