Bible-based GEMs of Spirit, and its “strength, presence and power… winged with Love!” (cit. 24, 512)
Let God Expressed Meekly/Mightily in you sparkle brightly with insights from Cobbey & others
as inspired by The Christian Science Quarterly Bible Lesson on
“Spirit”
for Sunday, February 5, 2023
(Cobbey Crisler’s insights are shared with the blessing of Janet Crisler janetcrisler7@gmail.com)
by Warren Huff, CedarS Executive Director Emeritus, warren@cedarscamps.org
SILENCE DIVISIVENESS! HEAR HOW TO THINK WITHOUT STRIFE!
START & STAY with the WHOLENESS of GOD’S ONENESS & ALLNESS!
Apply citation B1/Deut. 6:4 to yourself & the whole world.
As we continue to “love into view” our “best new month and year yet,” it’s very helpful that our Christian Science Quarterly Bible Lesson contains what Jesus was trained to pray to begin and end each day. (All Jews are still supposed to pray a key prayer at the start, as well as at the end of each day). They call this prayer the “Shema” – the Hebrew word for “Hear”— because Deuteronomy 6:4/citation B1 starts with that word.
4 Hear, O Israel: “The Lord our God, the Lord is one. (citation B1/Deut. 6:4) [The Shema prayer continues… ] 5 Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.” 6 These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts. 7 Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. 8 Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. 9 Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates.” Deuteronomy 6:4-9, (NIV), verses 6-9 follow citation B1.
Please note how constantly throughout each day Jews are supposed to prayerfully affirm the supremacy of God’s oneness and of the commandments that He gave to rule over all!
In her ground-breaking opening chapter of Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, Mary Baker Eddy, picks up on and interprets the centrality of the Shema’s demands on all of us and what we think most about– morning, noon and night – by asking the question: “Dost thou “love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind”? This command includes much, even the surrender of all merely material sensation, affection, and worship. This is the El Dorado of Christianity. It involves the Science of Life, and recognizes only the divine control of Spirit, in which Soul is our master, and material sense and human will have no place.” (page 9:17)
The value of unity/oneness is a powerful, healing keynote to focus on throughout each day. Our united prayers and actions will be especially helpful in the coming weeks and months as the world keeps emerging from the pandemic and hopefully from an escalation of the terrorism and atrocities of wars in Ukraine, the Middle East and wherever these “errors are screaming on their way out.”
As Christie Hanzlik, CS, pointed out in a paragraph of a CedarS Met for a previous Christian Science Quarterly Bible Lesson: “It is tempting to see a world consisting of millions of human opinions, warring media reports, racial strife, class warfare, tribalism, gender inequity, political personalities, family disagreements and even conflicts within ourselves. The singular answer to this seeming divisiveness is the oneness of Truth, the oneness of good, the oneness of God. God is indivisible. And therefore we, as the outcome of God, are also indivisible.”
Verse 3 of Christian Science Hymn 157 calls for us to make daily progress in demonstrating unity: “Day by day the understanding / Of our oneness shall increase.” This prayer request to God for oneness comes from no other than Jesus in the final hours before he allows himself to be captured for crucifixion, when he prayed for his disciples and us that we may feel at one with God and with one another! (John 17:11, 21, 22)
Christian Science Hymn 157
“Jesus’ prayer for all his brethren: / Father, that they may be one, / Echoes down through all the ages, / Nor prayed he for these alone / But for all, that through all time / God’s will be done.
“One the Mind and Life of all things, / For we live in God alone; / One the Love whose ever-presence / Blesses all and injures none. / Safe within this Love we find all / being one.
“Day by day the understanding / Of our oneness shall increase, / Till among all men and nations / Warfare shall forever cease, / So God’s children all shall dwell / in joy and peace.”
(Christian Science Hymnal, No. 157:1–3)
ACCEPT THE SPIRITUAL INSIGHT OF THE MIND OF CHRIST TO WIPE OUT DIVISIVENESS & ANIMOSITY!
Cobbey on John 4:24 (citation B2) as part of his conversation with a receptive Samaria woman at the well:
[Cobbey Crisler’s prelude to John 4:23, 24:] “John 4:20. The Samaritan woman said, “Our fathers worshiped in this mountain.” Boy, did that have a meaning. She’s pointing to the Samaritan temple, and guess who had destroyed it? The Jews. The Maccabean rulers had destroyed the Samaritan temple which was built to resemble the Jerusalem temple. It’s occupied territory. It’s a little difficult to dig in an area that Jordan still claims but Israel occupies.
It was destroyed by the Jews, so you can see the irony behind what the woman said, “Our fathers worshiped … “It’s past. It’s through. The Greek word that is used there is well in the past, “all wiped out.” We worshiped in this mountain, but the implication, guess who stopped us, or ruined the temple? Your fathers. We have a divisive thing. We, the Samaritans, worshiped here. You, the Jews, destroyed it. That’s the same thing that’s going on today in the same location.
John 4:21, “Jesus said, Woman.” this is his general address to womanhood, “Believe me. the hour cometh, ” still somewhat ahead, “when you won’t worry about geography in worshiping God. ··
John 4:23 & citation S3/31:25, ”The hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshipers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth: for the Father seeketh such to worship him. “Look at the definition of worship. “Worship is spiritual,” not structural, not geographical, not ritualistic. Why? Because worship of God can only properly be done by partaking of God’s own nature.
John 4:24 (cit. B2) tells us that “God is Spirit. Therefore, worshiping Spirit can only be done spiritually.” There’s no other way to do it. How basic. By the way, when you see “a Spirit” in there. It shouldn’t be there.
Listen to what God says about it. Notice the strong tenor of his words. To translate “God is a Spirit” is the most gross perversion of the meaning. “A Spirit” implies one of a class of “pneumata,” the Greek word for it. There is no trace, in the fourth gospel, of the vulgar conception of a multitude of spirits. “God is Spirit.” Mathematically one can only derive from Spirit included in it. Namely, spirituality is the derivation. Worship must be that.”
“John, The Beloved Disciple,” by B. Cobbey Crisler**
STOP BEING AT HOME IN THE BODY AS A MERE “TENANT IN A TOMB!”
Be at home in the ‘new man’ to “make all things new!” Cobbey on II Cor. 5:1, 5, 17 (cit. B16)
[Cobbey on II Cor. 5, verse 1:] “Where we are now is a tabernacle, which if “dissolved, we have a building of God, an house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens…” (We look out of heavenly consciousness—every window has a heavenly view. We worship where we live — Our bodies are our ultimate idols, if we are living there.
“Verse 4. For we that are in this tabernacle do groan, being burdened:” Jesus said “take my yoke upon you for my yoke is easy and my burden light”… (Matthew 11:30)
“Verse 6. It’s not what we see but what we know that matters: “Therefore we are always confident, knowing that, whilst we are at home in the body, we are absent from the Lord.” THIS IS ONE OF THE MOST RADICAL STATEMENTS IN THE WHOLE BIBLE THAT IS VIRTUALLY SKATED OVER.
“It is foolhardy to adapt ourselves to live in corporeality. You are a tenant in a tomb if at home in the body. Why be so satisfied with data coming to us from the 5 channels of the corporeal senses? Jesus said “Take no thought for your body.”
“Verse 8. “We are confident, I say, and willing rather to be absent from the body, and present with the Lord.”
“Socrates said “The dead body will not be me. Don’t let him talk about burying Socrates. Say only that you are burying the body.”
“Ishmael (In Moby Dick said “My body is but the lees of my better being.”
“Verse 16. “Wherefore henceforth know we no man after the flesh:”
The ultimate objective is to know no man (or woman) after the flesh, according to fleshly information. Our divine nature or anyone’s true, divine nature is not conveyed or confined by anything fleshly from “the old man.” As Jesus beheld, we are to behold the “new man” and in so doing make not just some things but ALL things new. [W: “new man” in SH 300:9]
“As Verse 17 (cit. B16) says, “Therefore, if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.” (II Cor. 5:17)
Transcribed from marginal notes in Warren’s Bible from a talk by Cobbey Crisler**
TO NOT SEE a TOMB as YOUR ENDING, NEVER SEE a WOMB as YOUR BEGINNING!
Cobbey Crisler on John 8:51, 58/citation B17 as related to Acts 9:36-42)
[Cobbey:] “In John 8:51 (prelude to cit. B17) Jesus said, ‘If a man keeps my saying, he will never see death.’ An unusual statement because certainly his disciples went on and saw the death process happening all around them. So once again, what does Jesus mean? What is the intent? What is the meaning? Dodd says it’s such a strong statement that it really excludes the possibility of ceasing to live. That there is an eternality to it. How would you feel that was intended? “If a man keep my saying, he shall never see death.”
Take the raising of Tabitha or Dorcas. (in Acts 9:36-42) Peter went in there. Everyone else around there saw death. Was it helping the situation? Did it solve the problem called death? Peter must have gone in there with a radically different point of view. And did it have a radically different result?
The statement in John 8:58 really started a popular commotion. Jesus says, “Before Abraham was, I am.” Does that fit into his statement about, “no man ascendeth up to heaven save he that has come down from heaven, even the son of man that is in heaven?” Is there a beginning for man, divinely speaking? Does it hold within it the key of eliminating the last enemy called death?”
“Book of John: A Walk with the Beloved Disciple” by B. Cobbey Crisler**
FIND ONENESS with God “as a humble ray of sunlight that is one with the sun”
cit. S18/333:26, John 10:30 & 18:3, 315, 361:16 as sung in “I and My Father” YouTube Video
“Man’s oneness with the Father” is a central point in Jesus’ healing theology as Mary Baber Eddy states, “Jesus of Nazareth taught and demonstrated man’s oneness with the Father, and for this we owe him endless homage.” (18:3-5) Below is a YouTube link to an inspiring song by a CedarS mom and award-winning Country Music artist, Cherie Brennan. It emphasizes the “I and my Father are one” mindset of Christ Jesus and mentioned in this week’s Bible Lesson citation S18/333:26-30 (& even more direct analogies derived from John 10:30 in SH 361:16, 26:10, 315:3. Enjoy! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bZMNlpZavkA
You can learn more about Cherie and buy her CD “You are Loved” (“I and My Father” is the 4th song) on her website through Spotify at: https://open.spotify.com/album/3Ii5CBrdNs6f8Y3t4l5XHl
Or, on Watchfire Music by CedarS friend, Peter Link, — LISTEN TO A SAMPLE of a different version also called “I and my Father are one” SUNG by Mindy Jostyn. You can BUY IT and the SHEET MUSIC for SOLOISTS at: https://watchfiremusic.com/shop/recordings/songs/i-and-my-father-are-one-2/
CLAIM GOD TO BE THE STRENGTH OF YOUR HEART NOW AND FOREVER!
Cobbey Crisler insights on Psalm 73: 26 (citation B21)
“Psalm chapter 73, Verse 26 refers to heart failure and degenerative diseases. “My flesh and my heart faileth.” But look at immediately what the psalmist knows to do. He feels those symptoms and what does he say? “God [is] the strength of my heart.” See how it handles the terminal nature of heart problems, “and my portion for ever.”
“Leaves of the Tree; Prescriptions from the Psalms” by B. Cobbey Crisler**
STRIVE TO “TOUCH THE FRINGES OF ETERNITY” (Hymn 64:3) TO FIND PERFECT WHOLENESS WITHIN YOU!
Cobbey Crisler on Mark 5:25-42 (cit. B22) for an issue of blood healed, plus a dead 12-yr.-old raised
Click on links below to see helpful images and video reenactments of these healings that the Christ means for you too!
- Heal longtime “issues” – Reach out to “touch the fringes of eternity” (Hymn 64) as in a Mark 5:28 reenactment and a more dramatic one as reenacted in ”The Chosen” Season 3, Episode 5
- As in a double-header healing, put out all mourners to raise the dead like Jesus did with Jairus’ daughter as in a Mark 5:21…42 reenactment
[Cobbey:] “A woman, hemorrhaging 12 years, was healed by touching the “wings” of Jesus’ garment. (Cobbey Crisler (CC) on the version in Luke 8:41) “The woman… is at the absolute desperate end of a rope. Here we find receptivity. Blessed are those are in this state. Happy are those because this state of mind can be changed. “This radical change of thought was in the presence of the Christ-correction that Jesus was exercising in the mental realm. It’s going to be sufficient and the woman feels that it will help her. She’s lost all her money on physicians. [No health insurance…] Mark even tells us that she’s worse because of that choice. [Mark 5:26] All she does is touch the border of his garment. The issue of blood, the continuous hemorrhaging, had occurred for twelve years, had kept her out of the temple, kept her out of worship and made her as unclean as the lepers, …
(CC on version in Mark 5:34) Verse 34. Jesus calls the woman, “Daughter.”… Jesus is using daughter in an entirely new way… The woman’s problem is blood. He even lifts the term “daughter” out of a blood relationship and defines a divine relationship… The dignity of womanhood is demonstrated.”
(CC on version in Luke 8:48) “Daughter, be of good comfort” (Verse 48). Look at how he’s addressing the thought of that woman. Not only the precious relationship to God, but the comfort. She hasn’t experienced that in twelve years. She’d lost all her money. She was about to be thrown on the society. There was nowhere to go when you were thrown on society. That may have happened to the woman who had been a sinner. Prostitution was the only open career for many women when they were simply thrown out and discarded from normal humanity…
“Jesus refuses to allow that woman to walk away from the scene thinking that physical contact with his robe had anything to do with the healing. He says, again, “Your faith hath made you whole.” The word “whole” and the word “heal” in Anglo-Saxon have the identical root. It implies that disease is something less than wholeness, that it is a fragmentation of our being. Healing is the condition of being made whole.”
“What Mark Recorded” and “Luke the Researcher,” both by B. Cobbey Crisler**
Warren’s ADDED BACKGROUND NOTE, THAT RELATES to APPLYING the 10 Commandments ABOVE:
“In Numbers 15:38-40, God tells Moses to have Hebrew men attach fringes to the border or wings of their prayer shawl garments … The woman healed of her 12-year issue was rewarded for exercising her faith that Christ Jesus was fulfilling this prophecy in Malachi: “But unto you that fear my name shall the Sun of righteousness arise with healing in his wings; (Mal. 4:2). Many others in Jesus day were also rewarded for exercising their faith in Jesus being the fulfillment of the scriptural promise of the healing power connected to the keeping of God’s law represented by the 10 Commandment fringes on the borders of his garment… Mark 6:56 records of Christ Jesus’ healing that “whithersoever he entered, into villages, or cities, or country, they laid the sick in the streets, and besought him that they might touch if it were but the border of his garment: and as many as touched him were made whole.” (or “perfectly whole” in the account in Matthew 14:36) Here’s to perfect wholeness for you in your faithfully following of the science of the Christ and in fulfilling God’s laws.
BONUS: THE OTHER HALF OF THE DOUBLE HEADER HEALING! WHEN SIMULTANEOUS PROBLEMS ARISE, PRIORITIZE RECEPTIVITY & HEALING OVER RANK, LIKE JESUS DID.
Cobbey Crisler on Jesus dealing with time management of 2 urgent appeals (Mark 5:21-42 & Luke 8:41-55)
[Cobbey on the Luke version of this healing “double-header”:] “In this case we have something that might present a problem. Two people that need attention simultaneously. What do you do?… Here’s how Jesus deals with it. He is first summoned by a ruler of the synagogue with a great deal of human priority. Jairus has the rank and he asks first. He’s got a more urgent need. His daughter is on the verge of dying (Luke 8:41). But Jesus can’t even get to the location where this girl is because of the crush of people in the narrow lanes of the Palestinian villages. The Greek word for “thronged” is often used to describe how close these groups got to one another. Jesus was nearly suffocated by the crowd.
“Later the disciples rebuked Jesus, in Verse 45, for asking “Who touched me?” To them it was ridiculous. Everybody was touching him. The Greek verb that’s used is a verb that means what happens to grain kernels between two grinding stones. They were ground really together. The people were that crowded.
“What happens? The woman does not wish to delay Jesus’ mission, but she is at the absolutely desperate end of a rope. Here we find the receptivity. Blessed are those who are in this state. Happy are those because the state of mind can be changed.
“This radical change of thought was in the presence of the Christ-correction that Jesus was exercising in the mental realm. It’s going to be sufficient and the woman feels that it will help her. She’s lost all her money on physicians. [No health insurance…] Mark even tells us that she’s worse because of that choice. [Mark 5:26] All she does is touch the border of his garment. The issue of blood, the continuous hemorrhaging that had occurred for twelve years had kept her out of the temple, kept her out of worship and made her as unclean as the lepers. With all sorts of legislative rules around her, she herself could not be touched because it would make the individual who did it unclean. But we find that Jesus welcomed that dear woman from the standpoint of God’s welcome, because he said, “the Son can do nothing of himself, but what he seeth the father do.” (John 5:19).
“In Luke 8, Verse 48 he calls that lady, “Daughter.” Whose daughter? Certainly, not his. In fact, he lifts that word “daughter” entirely out of any sense of blood relationship. That was the woman’s problem. He lifts even her identity out of blood.
“Daughter, be of good comfort” (Verse 48). Look at how he’s addressing the thought of that woman. Not only the precious relationship to God, but the comfort. She hasn’t experienced that in twelve years. She’d lost all her money. She was about to be thrown on the society. There was nowhere to go when you were thrown on society. That may have happened to the woman who had been a sinner. Prostitution was the only open career for many women when they were simply thrown out and discarded from normal humanity. She could not get a living unless her family supported her, and there is no indication of that happening.
“Jesus refuses to allow that woman to walk away from the scene thinking that physical contact with his robe had anything to do with the healing. He says, again, “Your faith hath made you whole.” The word “whole” and the word “heal” in Anglo-Saxon have the identical root. It implies that disease is something less than wholeness, that it is a fragmentation of our being. Healing is the condition of being made whole.
“We understand that equation when Jesus said, “If your eye be single” Matthew 6:22), indivisible, not shared, no divisions in it and no double vision. It is single-mindedness and persistency, as we see Jesus requiring later in our book, which results in man being whole as God views him.
“The other half of the time crunch demand and Christ’s use of humor to clear out funerial thought:
When Jesus goes to the raising of Jairus’ daughter, we don’t find any reason to bemoan the delay in getting there. Even though the news comes back that the daughter has died in the meantime (Verse 49). That is the human news. Jesus goes right in and clears the environment out (Verse 51). Notice, again, this must be telling us something about what is required in order to heal.
“The thought of death is so weighted down with its inevitability and grief that Jesus has to clear it out. Notice how he does so, incisively and brilliantly. He couldn’t clear them out while they were weeping. That was acceptable at a funeral. Jesus would have occupied the villain’s role.
“So, he simply tells them something that was an absolute fact to him, “That maid, right there that you see horizontal, no movement, no breath, no pulse, no anything, that little girl, she’s really not dead. That appearance that you see there is like sleep (Verse 52). And I am going to awaken her life.” All the paid mourners who were earning their salary for conducting a funeral service, and everybody else who had witnessed the tragedy associated with this little girl passing away laughed (Verse 53).
“Can you clear laughers out of funerals? There is certainly more justification from a social standpoint than with weepers. It also showed how deeply their grief had run. Forgetting every reason why they were there, they turned to laughing him to scorn. He put them all out.
“He went to the little girl, “Maid arise” (Verse 54). “Her spirit came again, she arose straightway” (Verse 55). And that beautiful practicality of Jesus, “Give her meat,” give her something to eat (Verse 55). What else would a twelve-year-old girl want anyway? It was also an announcement that everything was quite normal.”
“Luke, the Researcher,” by B. Cobbey Crisler**
SPIRIT, GOD, IS EVERYWHERE! Even if circumstances seem to have us thrown down to the depths of hell, “Whither Shall I Go from Thy Spirit” from Psalm 139 in this Bible Lesson (citation B24/Psalm 139:1, 7, 9, 10) comforts us with assurance of the uplifting ever-presence of Spirit. We can sing together of this in Hymn 599, “Whither Shall I Go from Thy Spirit”, in the 2017 Christian Science Hymnal.
This psalm is a favorite song at several camps and is especially lovely when sung with the descant. Click this link to hear All The Christian Science Camps Singing Whither – CedarS Camps . Holly Huff Bruland, CedarS Executive Director, proposed and coordinated this effort before a summer that was different for all of us due to pandemic protocols as an example to share with our constituents of the unity and support that we feel for one another and our work to bless youth, families and our world.
You can hear another version of it (and buy a 50th Anniversary trilogy of CedarS CDs all for $25 to go totally to camperships) at http://blog.cedarscamps.org/2011/07/16/order-around-the-clock-a-collection-of-3-cds-with-camp-songs-you-love-created-just-for-cedars/
