Wednesday Meeting Readings

First Church of Christ, Scientist, La Cañada Flintridge

Wednesday Meeting Readings

100210

Prayer in dealing with uncertainty

Wednesday, February 10, 2010

The Bible:

Section I

Ps 71:1

1In thee, O Lord, do I put my trust: let me never be put to confusion.

Ps 118:5,6 (to ;),14

5I called upon the Lord in distress: the Lord answered me, and set me in a large place.

6The Lord is on my side;

14The Lord is my strength and song, and is become my salvation.

Prov 14:26

26In the fear of the Lord is strong confidence: and his children shall have a place of refuge.

Gen 6:5,7 (to ;),8,9,12 (to ;),13,14,17,18,22

5¶And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.

7And the Lord said, I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth;

8But Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord.

9¶These are the generations of Noah: Noah was a just man and perfect in his generations, and Noah walked with God.

12And God looked upon the earth, and, behold, it was corrupt;

13And God said unto Noah, The end of all flesh is come before me; for the earth is filled with violence through them; and, behold, I will destroy them with the earth.

14¶Make thee an ark of gopher wood; rooms shalt thou make in the ark, and shalt pitch it within and without with pitch.

17And, behold, I, even I, do bring a flood of waters upon the earth, to destroy all flesh, wherein is the breath of life, from under heaven; and every thing that is in the earth shall die.

18But with thee will I establish my covenant; and thou shalt come into the ark, thou, and thy sons, and thy wife, and thy sons' wives with thee.

22Thus did Noah; according to all that God commanded him, so did he.

Gen 7:12,17,19

12And the rain was upon the earth forty days and forty nights.

17And the flood was forty days upon the earth; and the waters increased, and bare up the ark, and it was lift up above the earth.

19And the waters prevailed exceedingly upon the earth; and all the high hills, that were under the whole heaven, were covered.

Gen 8:1 (to :),13 (to :),15,16,21 and (to 2nd ;),22

1And God remembered Noah, and every living thing, and all the cattle that was with him in the ark:

13¶And it came to pass in the six hundredth and first year, in the first month, the first day of the month, the waters were dried up from off the earth:

15¶And God spake unto Noah, saying,

16Go forth of the ark, thou, and thy wife, and thy sons, and thy sons' wives with thee.

21and the Lord said in his heart, I will not again curse the ground any more for man's sake;

22While the earth remaineth, seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease.

I Cor 14:8 if,10,11,15,33

8if the trumpet give an uncertain sound, who shall prepare himself to the battle?

10There are, it may be, so many kinds of voices in the world, and none of them is without signification.

11Therefore if I know not the meaning of the voice, I shall be unto him that speaketh a barbarian, and he that speaketh shall be a barbarian unto me.

15What is it then? I will pray with the spirit, and I will pray with the understanding also: I will sing with the spirit, and I will sing with the understanding also.

33For God is not the author of confusion, but of peace, as in all churches of the saints.

II Kings 6:4-7 And

4And when they came to Jordan, they cut down wood.

5But as one was felling a beam, the axe head fell into the water: and he cried, and said, Alas, master! for it was borrowed.

6And the man of God said, Where fell it? And he shewed him the place. And he cut down a stick, and cast it in thither; and the iron did swim.

7Therefore said he, Take it up to thee. And he put out his hand, and took it.

Prov 3:1-6,25,26

1My son, forget not my law; but let thine heart keep my commandments;

2For length of days, and long life, and peace, shall they add to thee.

3Let not mercy and truth forsake thee: bind them about thy neck; write them upon the table of thine heart:

4So shalt thou find favour and good understanding in the sight of God and man.

5¶Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding.

6In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths.

25Be not afraid of sudden fear, neither of the desolation of the wicked, when it cometh.

26For the Lord shall be thy confidence, and shall keep thy foot from being taken.

John 9:1-3,6,7

1And as Jesus passed by, he saw a man which was blind from his birth.

2And his disciples asked him, saying, Master, who did sin, this man, or his parents, that he was born blind?

3Jesus answered, Neither hath this man sinned, nor his parents: but that the works of God should be made manifest in him.

6When he had thus spoken, he spat on the ground, and made clay of the spittle, and he anointed the eyes of the blind man with the clay,

7And said unto him, Go, wash in the pool of Siloam, (which is by interpretation, Sent.) He went his way therefore, and washed, and came seeing.

Matt 24:6 ye shall,7,13,35

6ye shall hear of wars and rumours of wars: see that ye be not troubled: for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet.

7For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes, in divers places.

13But he that shall endure unto the end, the same shall be saved.

35Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away.

I John 5:4

4For whatsoever is born of God overcometh the world: and this is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith.

Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures
by Mary Baker Eddy

410:14-17

Every trial of our faith in God makes us stronger.
15The more difficult seems the material condition to be
Love casteth
out fear overcome by Spirit, the stronger should be our
faith and the purer our love.

23:21-2

21In Hebrew, Greek, Latin, and English, faith and the
words corresponding thereto have these two defini‐
Self-reliance
and confidence tions, trustfulness and trustworthiness. One
24kind of faith trusts one's welfare to others.
Another kind of faith understands divine Love and how
to work out one's "own salvation, with fear and trem‐
27bling." "Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief!"
expresses the helplessness of a blind faith; whereas the
injunction, "Believe . . . and thou shalt be saved!"
30demands self-reliant trustworthiness, which includes spir‐
itual understanding and confides all to God.

The Hebrew verb to believe means also to be firm or
24:1to be constant. This certainly applies to Truth and Love
understood and practised.

297:20

Faith is higher and more spiritual than belief. It is
21a chrysalis state of human thought, in which spiritual
Faith higher
than belief evidence, contradicting the testimony of mate‐
rial sense, begins to appear, and Truth, the
24ever-present, is becoming understood. Human thoughts
have their degrees of comparison. Some thoughts are
better than others. A belief in Truth is better than a
27belief in error, but no mortal testimony is founded on the
divine rock. Mortal testimony can be shaken. Until
belief becomes faith, and faith becomes spiritual under‐
30standing, human thought has little relation to the actual
or divine.

367:30

30Because Truth is infinite, error should be known as
nothing. Because Truth is omnipotent in goodness,
error, Truth's opposite, has no might. Evil is but the
368:1counterpoise of nothingness. The greatest wrong is
but a supposititious opposite of the highest right. The
Real and
counterfeit 3confidence inspired by Science lies in the fact
that Truth is real and error is unreal. Error
is a coward before Truth. Divine Science insists that
6time will prove all this. Both truth and error have come
nearer than ever before to the apprehension of mortals,
and truth will become still clearer as error is self‐
9destroyed.

581:8-13

ark. Safety; the idea, or reflection, of Truth, proved
9to be as immortal as its Principle; the understanding of
Spirit, destroying belief in matter.

God and man coexistent and eternal; Science show‐
12ing that the spiritual realities of all things are created
by Him and exist forever.

304:22

The science of music governs tones. If mortals caught
harmony through material sense, they would lose har‐
24mony, if time or accident robbed them of material sense.
To be master of chords and discords, the science of
music must be understood. Left to the decisions
27of material sense, music is liable to be misappre‐
hended and lost in confusion. Controlled by belief,
instead of understanding, music is, must be, imper‐
30fectly expressed. So man, not understanding the Sci‐
ence of being, — thrusting aside his divine Principle as
incomprehensible, — is abandoned to conjectures, left in
305:1the hands of ignorance, placed at the disposal of illusions,
subjected to material sense which is discord. A discon‐
3tented, discordant mortal is no more a man than discord
is music.

357:25-6

If what opposes God is real, there must be two
powers, and God is not supreme and infinite. Can
One
supremacy 27Deity be almighty, if another mighty and
self-creative cause exists and sways man‐
kind? Has the Father "Life in Himself," as the Scrip‐
30tures say, and, if so, can Life, or God, dwell in evil and
create it? Can matter drive Life, Spirit, hence, and so
defeat omnipotence?

358:1Is the woodman's axe, which destroys a tree's so-called
life, superior to omnipotence? Can a leaden bullet de‐
Matter
impotent 3prive a man of Life, — that is, of God, who is
man's Life? If God is at the mercy of matter,
then matter is omnipotent. Such doctrines are "confu‐
6sion worse confounded."

389:28-13

A case of convulsions, produced by indigestion, came
under my observation. In her belief the woman had
30chronic liver-complaint, and was then suffering from a
complication of symptoms connected with this belief. I
cured her in a few minutes. One instant she spoke de‐
390:1spairingly of herself. The next minute she said, "My
food is all digested, and I should like something more
3to eat."

We cannot deny that Life is self-sustained, and we
should never deny the everlasting harmony of Soul, sim‐
Ultimate
harmony 6ply because, to the mortal senses, there is seem‐
ing discord. It is our ignorance of God, the
divine Principle, which produces apparent discord, and
9the right understanding of Him restores harmony. Truth
will at length compel us all to exchange the pleasures and
pains of sense for the joys of Soul.

12When the first symptoms of disease appear, dispute the
testimony of the material senses with divine Science.

66:6

6Trials teach mortals not to lean on a material staff, —
a broken reed, which pierces the heart. We do not
Salutary
sorrow half remember this in the sunshine of joy
9and prosperity. Sorrow is salutary. Through
great tribulation we enter the kingdom. Trials are
proofs of God's care. Spiritual development germi‐
12nates not from seed sown in the soil of material hopes,
but when these decay, Love propagates anew the higher
joys of Spirit, which have no taint of earth. Each suc‐
15cessive stage of experience unfolds new views of divine
goodness and love.

581:19

The higher false knowledge builds on the basis of evi‐
dence obtained from the five corporeal senses, the more
21confusion ensues, and the more certain is the downfall
of its structure.

418:20

Truth is affirmative, and confers
21harmony. All metaphysical logic is inspired by this sim‐
ple rule of Truth, which governs all reality. By the
truthful arguments you employ, and especially by the
24spirit of Truth and Love which you entertain, you will
heal the sick.

496:15

15Hold perpetually this thought, — that it is the spiritual
idea, the Holy Ghost and Christ, which enables you to
demonstrate, with scientific certainty, the rule of healing,
18based upon its divine Principle, Love, underlying, over‐
lying, and encompassing all true being.

547:25

The true the‐
ory of the universe, including man, is not in
27material history but in spiritual development.
Inspired thought relinquishes a material, sensual, and
mortal theory of the universe, and adopts the spiritual and
30immortal.

From the Christian Science Hymnal:
Hymn 292: “Put on the whole armor of pure consecration, The breastplate of righteousness valiantly gird”
Hymn 234: “… In work that keeps faith sweet and strong, In trust that triumphs over wrong”
Hymn 123: “How firm a foundation, ye saints of the Lord, Is laid for your faith in His excellent Word”