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Then the third warp thread, or law, I
would like to call regeneration of the self. If we want healing, we have to
come towards it. If you want to repair broken bits of china, you first have to
clean the pieces to be brought together, — isn't that like the second law
we considered? Then you apply the adhesive to both sides and bring them
together.
So if we want the blessing of health and
wholeness to come to us, something is called for on our part. Perhaps we are
holding on to something that we ought to be changing in our moral character.
Perhaps we are too full of ourselves or we are not full enough of our divine
worth. Very often what is called for is a regeneration of the self at a deep
level, so that we are no longer holding on to hurts and unworthiness and a
burning sense of the injustice of life. Instead of those negative attitudes,
healing requires from us grace and forgiveness and patience and humility and
affection and a temperate attitude to others. We need to feed consciousness
with a true estimate of our real self as God-idea. We are not any old self, we
are God's own expression of Himself. We are God's own child, the Bible teaches.
"Beloved, now are we the sons of God" (I John 3:2). So we ought then to have an
uplifted sense of our real worth, a spiritual sense of self-worth, which also
then gives us a reverence for the worth of others. This changed attitude starts
to heal a lot of these difficult relationships which so often result in head-on
confrontations. In Psalm 119 it says, "Great peace have they which love thy
law: and nothing shall offend them" (v.165). How we hold on offences, don't we?
We rehearse them and recount them. How offended we have been! How can we expect
the grace of God the healing power to come flooding in if we are holding on
with both hands to some offence which is nothing in eternity?
This lovely divine self! The classic
example in the Bible of this particular theme of the reformation of the self,
and the discovery of the divine self, is found in the great story of Jacob. It
is essentially at the heart of the Old Testament — Jacob and his twelve
sons,who become the twelve tribes, the children of Israel. They are the Old
Testament equivalent of Jesus and his twelve disciples in the New Testament.
These twelve regenerated individuals become the first apostles, the first
Christians. Both the children of Israel and the apostles depict the same way
forward that is required of you and me.
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Published by
Elmdon
Publications
Elmdon, Saffron Walden, Essex, England
1989
In
association with Christian Science Foundation, England |
