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.
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.