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God’s character and ‘the heart of divinity’

Reasoning from a spiritual standpoint when faced with discomfort, a man was healed by realizing that he could only ever express good qualities – qualities that have their source in God.

  • By Randal Craft

Christian Science Perspective audio edition
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I was coming back from a walk one day and noticed a fair amount of debris by the side of the road. There happened to be a couple of plastic bags as well, so I decided to start bagging what I could. At one point, I saw a familiar figure – a man sitting on a wall where I’d frequently seen him in the past. I thought to myself, “He sits there all the time; why isn’t he helping out to clean things up?”

Almost immediately, my neck and shoulders started to feel more than uncomfortable, and I had a hard time moving them. While completing the pick-up efforts, I prayed to God in accord with the teachings of Christian Science, discovered by Mary Baker Eddy. I affirmed that I was truly spiritual, God’s perfect offspring – and therefore not material. I reasoned that I was free from material beliefs of any kind.

On returning home, I began to do some self-assessment and realized that my discordant physical condition was just reflecting a discordant state of thought – some judgmental self-righteousness. However, the truths I affirmed earlier came to mind again, and I saw that God’s offspring could never truly express anything but the goodness of God’s character, so to speak – God’s very nature. This meant that I could express only qualities that have their source in God, such as love, consideration, thoughtfulness, respect, humility.

So, how could being judgmental or self-righteous ever truly be a part of me? It couldn’t. And the same things were true as well for the man I had seen. As I prayed with these ideas, I felt a change in my physical condition, and I was totally free of any discordant symptoms the next day.

In thinking further about God’s character, these words from “Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures” by Mrs. Eddy come to mind: “Through spiritual sense you can discern the heart of divinity…” (p. 258). We might think about the “heart of divinity” as another way of referring to God’s character. And Science and Health talks further about spiritual sense as the ability to comprehend Spirit, God (see p. 209).

So, we learn more – comprehend more – about God and God’s heart, His nature as our all-loving, all-wise, and all-good divine Parent, as we tune in to spiritual sense. And our ability to stay with spiritual sense expands and grows through experiences in our daily lives when we choose to see spiritual reality, as opposed to a material view of discordant mental or physical conditions. That’s what happened to me that day on my walk.

Ultimately, it stands to reason that, as we learn more about God, we learn more about ourselves. And as we all begin to accept this uplifted view – spiritual reality – we will find ourselves manifesting more and more of the heart of divinity, God’s character, and the Godlike, good qualities that naturally belong to us as divine Spirit’s offspring.

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