Puzzled? Get rid of what isn’t needed.

If we’re feeling stumped by a problem, we can turn to God for inspiration that dissolves unhelpful modes of thinking and opens the door to progress – as a teacher experienced when faced with a particularly disruptive student.

Christian Science Perspective audio edition
Loading the player...

I’ve been enjoying the popular New York Times online word game, “Wordle,” in which players try to guess a five-letter word in six (or fewer) attempts. While the goal is to find the correct letters, I’ve found it just as helpful during the process to find out which letters aren’t in the word. The more wrong letters I can eliminate, the more clearly the correct letters are revealed – and I can solve the puzzle.

I’ve found this is a helpful metaphor for praying. The more unneeded thoughts we can eliminate – thoughts that have nothing to do with God, who is all good – the better we can nourish the thoughts that are from God, which help and heal.

During my first year as a middle school teacher, there was a student who was consistently argumentative and caused disruptions to the class. After several weeks of struggling through these class periods, I realized that my efforts to improve the situation hadn’t included prayer.

So, through prayer, I worked to eliminate from my own thinking any unhelpful assumptions about this student, and instead to see her potential to be good. Mary Baker Eddy, the discoverer of Christian Science, writes in “Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures,” “Love giveth to the least spiritual idea might, immortality, and goodness, which shine through all as the blossom shines through the bud” (p. 518).

A bud already has within it the complete flower. Similarly, each spiritual child of God – which includes each one of us – is a complete idea, already capable of expressing intelligence, kindness, and respect, because that’s how God made us. And Love, another name for God, gives each of us the ability to eliminate from our thinking anything unlike God.

This elevated the way I thought about and interacted with this student. And it wasn’t long before she began interacting kindly with her classmates and with me. She started sharing good ideas in class. We even discovered that we liked the same kind of music and had some fun chats about our favorite bands. By the end of the semester, the atmosphere in this class had improved greatly.

Every day we can pray to eliminate from our thinking what is unneeded or unhelpful, by letting God tell us what He knows to be true about His children. Doing so brings greater clarity to even the most puzzling situations, and we will find more of God’s ever-present goodness revealed.

Adapted from the Nov. 25, 2022, Christian Science Daily Lift podcast.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to Puzzled? Get rid of what isn’t needed.
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/Commentary/A-Christian-Science-Perspective/2023/0106/Puzzled-Get-rid-of-what-isn-t-needed
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe