Gifted with agelessness
Does life inevitably go downhill as time goes by? Acknowledging our spiritual nature as God’s children offers a powerful starting point for overcoming age-related limitations.
One summer morning when I was school age, I was playing golf with three players who had retired from their jobs years before. They were happy to include me, and right from the start we were having fun together. After one player hit his tee shot, I pointed to where it had gone, and with a hint of wistfulness in his voice he commented admiringly on my “young eyes.”
It was the first time I really took note of how ingrained the concept is that pain, restriction, erosion of abilities, and so on are inevitable as time goes by. The belief that we are destined to live a life that ultimately goes downhill is so widespread – do we stand a chance at overcoming age-based limitations?
I’ve come to find that, yes, we certainly do. Maybe you’ve heard the saying, “One with God is a majority.” That certainly is encouraging. It hints at how we are effectively governed and defended by God. Christian Science teaches that God is without an adversary. God is the one and only legitimate power, authority, creator.
So, one with God isn’t just a majority; really, one with God is a monopoly. That is, the inherent oneness we all have with our divine Parent is a powerful foundation for experiencing goodness and strength in our lives.
That’s because God doesn’t actually see each of us as aging and limited mortals. The manner in which God, divine Spirit, has created us is not based in matter. God’s children, the reflection of divine Spirit, are gifted with ageless, entirely spiritual identities. Jesus stated, “That which is born of the Spirit is spirit” (John 3:6).
And we don’t have to age or die in order to be spiritual. We have this status here in the present. Monitor founder Mary Baker Eddy asks an insightful question in her central work, “Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures”: “Can there be any birth or death for man, the spiritual image and likeness of God?” (p. 206).
We each have the right to follow Jesus’ example and move beyond false beliefs (no matter how prevalent) about ourselves. Once even a little glimpse of our spiritual identity comes into view, we begin to recognize that there could be no aging process for what God has created.
And then we begin to experience victories over fear and limitations associated with aging – not because we’re trying hard to make this happen through willpower, but because our prayers are based in the goodness and rightness of God. When our heartfelt prayers are impelled not just by human hopes, but by an acknowledgment of our true, spiritual nature, then the power of God undergirds and is behind them.
This column and other Christian Science publications include many accounts of individuals who have experienced this firsthand. For instance, in “Our true selves – not limited by age,” a lifelong athlete shares how a better understanding of God’s nature, and of our nature as God’s spiritual offspring, freed him from painful symptoms he’d attributed to his age (see Bruce Butterfield, CSMonitor.com, Feb. 26, 2019).
Of course, much of what we see in the world around us would obscure the truth of our identity as ageless and spiritual. But it’s the spiritual fact for each one of us. We certainly could wait for everyone else to catch sight of this and then join them. Or, instead, we can humbly set our sights on this spiritual reality right now, and encourage others to, through our own prayerful efforts, based on God’s unchangeable truth, to live our inherent agelessness more freely.
As the Bible puts it, “God hath given to us eternal life” (I John 5:11). That’s a gift we each possess, and it never can be taken from any of us, God’s loved spiritual children.