When contrasted with taking in the drama reported in the news, reading the Bible Lessons laid out in the “Christian Science Quarterly” might seem like a rather sedate exercise. But each week’s compilation of citations from the Bible and Mary Baker Eddy’s “Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures” conveys the transformative power of Christ, Truth, in fresh ways.
That is the acme of up-to-date information: God voicing to human consciousness the knowledge we need of divine goodness, awakening us to what it is timely to understand about God, Spirit, and His spiritual creation. What could be more compelling than the present possibility of Christian healing?
For those of us tethered to breaking news alerts, this daily spiritual news can prompt us to question what we are prioritizing. Is our primary attention given to what seems to be going wrong or to what’s eternally right – namely, God’s all-embracing love, ever-presence, and all-powerful truth?
Making the latter our main source of news enables us to shine some healing light on the very events that might otherwise stir us to visceral reactions such as despair or even rage. It enables us to look beneath the clamor of these events to see a “current running heavenward” (Science and Health, p. 106) – an underlying tendency of thought toward the harmony that God forever exudes and that we, as God’s expression, truly include. Noting the presence of this heavenly harmony where human discord seems to prevail nurtures a comforting calm as well as confidence in present and future progress.
The heavenward-running current is ever ongoing because it is the outflow of Christ, divine Truth, causing materialistic thinking to give way to the recognition of what’s spiritually real. Christ is ever active in human consciousness, steering us individually and universally in the path of salvation, our ultimate freedom from all discordant consciousness and conditions. Every time we are receptive to that Christly steer, the spiritual truth of how harmonious we are as God’s creation is brought to light.
This reality of spiritual harmony is described in various ways throughout Mrs. Eddy’s writings, including this bold statement that would certainly strike humanity as “breaking news” today: “Man as God’s idea is already saved with an everlasting salvation” (“Miscellaneous Writings 1883-1896,” p. 261). That is, we are not suffering – or even just “getting by” – in an imperfect, material world but spiritual beings in a universe operating in perfect harmony.
While this might feel counterintuitive, it is well worth pondering as the spiritual counterfact to all that the material senses report. It means that we’re not waiting to be saved but are awakening to the established truth that we are God’s spiritual expression. Every reversal through Christ of what appears to be the opposite evidence of evil is part of the “current” moving humanity toward universal proof of “everlasting salvation.”
A Bible account (see Luke 24) describes a significant shift in this direction when Jesus’ crucifixion was itself the day’s headline, leaving his followers dispersed and despondent. Two of them, heading out of Jerusalem to a nearby village called Emmaus, couldn’t help themselves: All they could talk about was the breaking news, including astonishing rumors that Jesus was still alive. This focus of their conversation continued when they were joined by a stranger, who was actually the risen Jesus, whom they didn’t recognize.
Just think about it. Right there, where the headlining news was so utterly attention-grabbing and gut-wrenching, history’s most pivotal point – the cornerstone of humanity’s salvation – was unfolding before their eyes. They were on the road to Emmaus, while Jesus was on the pathway to ascension, his ultimate proof that humanity is only mistakenly bound in, to, or by a limited, mortal existence. He was not only pointing out the path to salvation but proving that its conclusion is life lived fully above and independent of matter, in pure Spirit, God.
When the two disciples grasped what was really going on, they headed straight back to Jerusalem to share the new, true breaking news, the actual news – the ever-relevant good news that Jesus had risen.
We bless ourselves and better serve humanity as we daily prioritize familiarity with the gospel news of our everlasting salvation as God’s creation. By turning to God to dissolve the fear, sorrow, or anger with which we might be tempted to react to whatever’s happening in the world, we will see more of God’s heavenly harmony emerge, both right where we are and beyond our own lives, including in the daily news that gets reported.
Adapted from an editorial published in the Jan. 13, 2025, issue of the Christian Science Sentinel.
