Application GEMs of the PRINCIPLE and LAW OF LOVE IN ACTION
Sunday, June 26th, 2022
By Warren Huff (with insights from Cobbey Crisler)
Application GEMs of the PRINCIPLE and LAW OF LOVE IN ACTION
Let God Expressed Meekly/Mightily in you sparkle brightly with insights from Cobbey Crisler & others as inspired by The Christian Science Quarterly Bible Lesson on
“God”
for June 27- July 3, 2022
(Cobbey’s insights are shared with the blessing of Janet Crisler janetcrisler7@gmail.com)
by Warren Huff, CedarS Executive Director Emeritus, warren@cedarscamps.org
AVOID THE WRONG REMEDY—RELY on the STABLE, PERFECT MEDICINE of MIND
Cobbey Crisler on Ps. 19:7, 8/Golden Text & the sure stability of Mind-cure medicine
“Read Psalm chapter 19:7-9 and you will discover there are quality controls as far as God’s medicine (or vaccine) is concerned: all the things you would want to see on the label. Look at the words “perfect,” “sure,” right,” “pure,” “clean,” and “true,” which has the meaning in Hebrew of stable. You want a stable product. You want a clean product. You want it pure. You want it right. You don’t want the wrong remedy. You want it sure. You want it perfect.”
“Leaves of the Tree: A Prescription from Psalm,” by B. Cobbey Crisler**
DAILY COMMIT TO GLADLY OBEY EACH COMMANDMENT TO FEEL HARMONIOUS WHOLENESS WITHIN & TO EXPRESS “THE WHOLE OF MAN IN HIS IMAGE & LIKENESS.”
[SH 340:9+; from Deut. 5:6, 7: Deut. 30:10-20/GT & RR; Deut. 9:7; Ex. 20:1+; Mark 12:29+;]
Jesus also answered a question by a “certain ruler” about how to “inherit eternal life” with a recitation of keeping the commandments. (Luke 18:18-22, cit. B18) Elsewhere he says the greatest of the two great Commandments is to “love God with all your heart… soul & … mind” (Deut. 6:5/citation B4 & Matt. 22:37). It’s lived by whole-heartedly putting into practice the 1st 4 Commandments, summed-up below:
#1. Celebrate examples of God’s unfailing, freeing love if ever tempted to be worried!**
Click on each # below for elements of a Barry Huff podcast series on The 10 Commandments at ChristianScience.com. It starts with https://www.christianscience.com/youth/resources-lists/sunday-school-teachers-teaching-resources/the-first-commandment-animated-tr
#2. Quit thinking most about material things and bodies that will never be “up to the job” of being God.
#3. Don’t say O.M.G. (“Oh, My God!”) unless you are praying God’s name and expecting a quick answer!
#4. Remember—give loving attention to—God’s Genesis 1 Sabbath & work out from perfection, not up to it!
Jesus says the second great Commandments is to “love your neighbor as yourself” (Matt. 22:39). It’s lived by whole-heartedly putting into practice the rest of the Commandments, summed up below:
#5. Respect and obey all RIGHT authority figures and boundaries in your life.
#6. Refuse (re-fuse) to get angry, make fun of or put anyone down! (unchecked feelings of superiority leads to killing Matt.5:21+)
#7. Seek deep satisfaction in all God’s given and keep your promises (unchecked lust leads to adultery Matt.5:27+)
#8. Stop trying to GET happiness & instead try to GIVE it! (fulfill your “reason for existing… to impart…” My. 165)
#9. Stop saying what’s not REALLY true of others or of you (bear true witness— “tell …the whole truth… so help me God!”)
#10. Feel & say of the good of others “Thank You God! That’s Mine Too! (TYG! TMT! Is more powerful than TNT!)
**I’ve found it helpful to know that Jews combine our 1st and 2nd Commandments as their 2nd Commandment. They regard the preceding verse not only as the 1st Commandment, but also as a divine reminder of how God saved them – delivering them out of slavery in Egypt: “I am the Lord thy God, which brought thee out of the land of Egypt, from the house of bondage” (Exodus 20:2 & Deuteronomy 5:6).
We can daily live out the healing power of the 10 Commandments as we live-up to the truism that “to whom much is given, much is expected.” With all my heart I praise and thank God daily as I mentally review the many prayer-based healings God has given me. With ALL glory to God, these demonstrations of divine power (as I’ve shared in talks and Mets) have come to me in the form of:
- my yielding to divine Mind’s harmony 12 yrs. ago for a rapid dissolving of a cancerous growth;
- an instantaneous healing of a broken arm (later x-ray verified before playing D1 football);
- a $100k humanly unsolicited gift from a first-time donor who called a few minutes after I knew of the need & was truly grateful in advance that it was already met;
- God filling our Mediterranean Sea in CedarS Bible Lands Park for Cable Skiing and other watersports with 60 million gallons of “holy water” in just 6 days before CedarS 50th Opening Day as had been promised to our Memorial Weekend guests;
- a downpour, on-cue and “out of the blue,” to divine drench a wildfire (That makes it possible for all wildfires since “Impossibilities never occur.” SH 245:27)
- AND MANY MORE!…
“What cannot God do?” [These testimonies & others should eventually be fully shared as testimonies in the Christian Science periodicals.]
SILENCE DIVISIVENESS! Think without STRIFE!
PRAY for our DIVINE SENSE of ONENESS to INCREASE!
As July arrives and CedarS “finest of the wheat” staff continues during our second two-week session to “love into view” our “best summer yet,” it’s very helpful that our Christian Science Quarterly Bible Lesson contains what Jesus was trained to pray to begin each day (and what all Jews still are supposed to pray to begin as well as end each day). Jews call this key prayer of theirs the “Shema” – the Hebrew word for “Hear”— because Deuteronomy 6:4/at the end of the Responsive Reading starts with that word.
4 Hear, O Israel: “The Lord our God, the Lord is one. 5 Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.” (end of the Responsive Reading /Deut. 6:4, 5) [The rest of the Shema prayer… ] 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 after the portion in the Responsive Reading
Please note how constantly throughout each day (as yellow-highlighted above) Jews are supposed to prayerfully affirm the supremacy of God’s oneness and commandments to rule over all!
It’s helpfully significant that this key “Shema” prayer of oneness dovetails with CedarS 2022 theme of “Unity” – which was subsequently announced as the theme of this year’s Annual Meeting of the Mother Church. 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 emerges from the pandemic and hopefully from an escalation of the terrorism and atrocities of wars in Ukraine, the Middle East or wherever it raises its ugly head.
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)
“TURN THE TABLES” ON ALL FABLES! BE UNWAVERING & NEVER FOOLED BY A FABLE FALSELY CLAIMING ANY “PERFECT GIFT FROM ABOVE” (cit. B2) CAN EVER BE MADE TO DISAPPEAR!
Discover in your “wilderness” experience a “vestibule” entryway where all that disappears is a material sense (like bulky outer garments) of “loneliness, doubt, darkness” while “spiritual sense unfolds the great facts of existence.” (Science & Health, 597:16) In the sacred refuge and solitude of this wilderness, we find the constancy of perfect health, the confidence of spiritual light-heartedness and sufficiency…all of which can never be diminished or made to disappear!
[Cobbey Crisler on James 1:17 (citation B2) and beyond thematically:
“Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variableness, neither shadow of turning”—as in an eclipse”[W:] or as in illusionist David Copperfield’s trick to click here to see the whole audience slowly revolved to make the Statue of Liberty seem to disappear. (“The audience wasn’t in on it. This was a real illusion. The audience was placed on a rotating platform and he slowly rotated it so no one would noticed. When the curtains dropped the audience was actually facing the other way. The whole set was designed so you wouldn’t know you were moving. The spotlights used to “pass through the empty space” was actually there to blind the audience should they turn around to where the actual statue was.“)]
[Cobbey again] “As promised in scriptures:
“God is not a man, that he should lie…hath he not said, and shall he not do it? Or hath he spoken and shall he not make it good?” (Numbers 23: 19}
And, “For I am the Lord; I change not.” (Malachi 3:6)
James 1:18 continues: “Of his own will begat he us with the word—logos—of truth, that we should be a kind of first fruits of his creatures”—a sample of what He created to be consecrated to Himself.”
[per Warren’s notes on Cobbey Crisler’s talk on “The Book of Job”]
… “We already know that James read Job because we read the verse (James 5:11) that mentions Job in it…
James 1:6 tells us how we should pray—[W’s 10/7/19 notes: pray like Job did who never wavered in proclaiming his spiritual innocence. Job so refined his powerful prayers of protest to God that he received his healing and “the Lord gave Job twice as much as he had before” (Job 42:10)].
[Cobbey:] “You’ll find when prayer is not prayer… “Let him ask in faith nothing wavering.” Wavering suggests this to-and-fro state of mind…
James 1:8 “A double-minded man is unstable in all his ways.”…
James 3:17 “But the wisdom that is from above” all stems from the commitment to oneness.”
“The Book of Job: A Mental Court Case” by B. Cobbey Crisler**
[W.] “Keep your eyes on the prize” of Liberty—
As James 3:17 declares wise prayer from above is committed to oneness and is guaranteed of success. Mary Baker Eddy says of the unsuccessful prayers for President McKinley when he assassinated: “Had prayer so fervently offered possessed no opposing element… the result would have been scientific and the patient would have recovered.” (Miscellany, 293:21)
[W.] For wise and successful, answered prayers keep your “eyes on the prize”—on the perfect law of liberty (like on the Statue of Liberty when David Copperfield seemed to make it vanish by turning the tables under his entire audience). When our perfect –free, large, full— liberty seems to have vanished by material illusions and false beliefs, we can instantly “turn back the tables on all fables” and look continually to the perfect, stable and unvarying LAW of liberty…
James 1:25, cit. B19 “whoso looketh unto the perfect law of liberty, and continueth therein, he being not a forgetful hearer, but a doer of the work, this man shall be blessed in his deed.”
BE CLAD BY “FEAR NOT…” ANGEL MESSAGES! (Isa. 43:5, cit. B6; Isaiah 41:10; Daniel 10:19…) An example of one of Cobbey Crisler’s Sunday School student who proved God is “… the one who saves me from violence.” (II Samuel 22:3 plus Isa. 43:5 (cit. B5), 1 John 4:18, Job 3:25)
[Cobbey Crisler on handling thoughts of fear:] “Fear… resting in the thought of everyone, especially today, with so many things that seem to be happening unexpectedly. Is that all accumulating in the form of suppressed fear? Look at what Job says happens.
“…the thing that I have greatly feared is come upon me…” (Job 3:25)
What is the relationship between the fear and the thing? … It’s magnetic.
If we understand that to be true about the quality of fear in thought, would anyone be afraid again? Would anyone in his right mind want to be afraid again? If we knew all that fear was doing— was attracting the thing that we were afraid of— right to us? Just think of the disservice so many Hollywood movies do, if this is correct. Also, ask yourself, if it is a coincidence, that right after we see certain movies, that we suddenly find the same disasters are occurring? The focus is human thought!
This is one of the most beautiful exposures of the nature of this to-and-fro evil to attack humanity. Our effort must be to break that magnetism so that the thing feared cannot come to man individually or collectively, because there’s nothing in thought to attract it.
The textbook gives us the solution to fear, the textbook of the Bible. Because 1st John (4:18) gives us the solution to fear. What is it? “Perfect Love castest out fear:” What kind of love? It’s got to be perfect, not a chink in it, in the armor. Is that stating to us that only in thought is a complete defense, or panoply (a complete suit of armor), with the threat of something that otherwise would be fearsome indeed?
[Powerful application example shared by Cobbey:] One of my Sunday School students once had the rest of the class on the edges of their chairs as a result of an experience she had just that week. It illustrates this. She was walking home very late at night after an extension course at a local college in a very poor area of town, not lit very well. As she was walking through suddenly she heard a car behind her. It squealed its brakes, stopped at the curb, and out jumped four leather-jacketed “gentlemen.” They ran right towards her, grabbed her, and started dragging her into the nearby woods.
Here comes the big question, like it came from Noah, like it came for Daniel, like it came for Job. Here it is still a question mark in her thought. That girl had been used to studying the Bible. She was pretty good with it theoretically. Here came an opportunity to see if it had any practical value. Of course, you don’t think too intellectually at times like that. She said to the class that all that came to her was something she hadn’t even recognized was from the Bible. She never even remembered reading it. It was (from Isaiah 41:10, cit. B5 & Isa. 43:5) “Fear not for I am with you.” She kept shouting that at the top of her lungs, “Fear not for I am with you.”
Here was a mob scene. Something in the human nature of one of those boys was touched by that higher sense because it broke up the mob slightly. He said, “Hey, wait a minute, let’s let her alone. She’s not that kind of a girl.” That brief stopping of what looked like the inevitable was sufficient for a car, just coming around to catch the scene in its headlights. It was a police car. The boys dropped her fast, got into their car and took off. The policemen, sizing it up quickly, stopped, went over to this gal and picked her up and said, “Would you like a ride home? Are you alright?” She said, “Yes, thank you very much.” She rode in the car with the policemen back to her house and the driver said, “You know, little lady, how lucky you are. This isn’t our regular beat. Our beat’s one block up from here. But my buddy said, ‘Hey, tonight, why don’t we just go down and check that area?’ So, I agreed and we went.”
That gal, in really reaching out for the only possible help—there was no human help — had apparently touched the solution for her experience that could be the solution for all of us. What needed to be counteracted in thought was fear, because look what came to her, “Fear not!” Why? The textbook answer, “For I am with thee.” Just that mustard seed was able to counteract what would have been the magnetic attraction to the thing she greatly feared. It was also apparently enough to, not only reach the thought of one boy, but perhaps even to alert the policemen to an idea that they had not contemplated on the previous night.
And everything arrived at once. You can imagine what that meant to the kids when they heard that in Sunday School and to me as well. I’ve always kind of taken it as a beautiful example of what Job is saying here in revealing the nature of fear. (Job 3:25)
There’s a movie ad I read not too recently showing that we’re almost gluttons for punishment as far as human nature is concerned. That movie ad—maybe you’ve seen it—it promises audiences in big, bold headlines, “AT LAST—TOTAL TERROR!” (Laughter) Who wants total terror? But people are paying money for it! When they leave that theater, what’s dancing on their eyelids and their mental memory as far as these things are concerned? What does a knock on the door, or a scream in the night, or anything else now mean in terms of the helplessness of man and man shoved back into no-dominion-at-all, but fatalistically waiting for what comes?”
“The Case of Job,” by B. Cobbey Crisler**
CHERISH EXAMPLES OF WHAT GOD CAN DO FOR YOU WHEN YOU TRULY ACCEPT YOURSELF AS BEING GOD’S VERY OWN IMAGE AND LIKENESS.
“The admission to one’s self that man is God’s own likeness sets man free to master the infinite idea.” (citation S10/Science & Health 90:24–25,). [Warren:] Since this was the closing citation of Section 2 in this week’s Bible Lesson it reminded me of two, wonderful, interconnected healings I experienced during the final exam week of my freshman year at Princeton University. Here’s a link to a text and audio retelling of the mighty implications of admitting that you are God’s own likeness: AP History & Audio of appendicitis healing & exam miracle – CedarS Camps
Attached at the top right of the online version of these GEMs is an MP3 download of a catchy and impactful tune written by former CedarS counselor, Mike Griswold. It helps us affirm and acknowledge that we are God’s image and likeness.
START WITH GOD TO GIVE THANKS AS DID 1 OF THE 10 LEPERS JESUS HEALED
See a CSJ article about Luke 17:12-16/cit. B14 and cit. S17, 94:20
To view what this healing could mean to you, click on this Christian Science Journal webpage address: https://journal.christianscience.com/shared/view/2pl5ue2yiyk?s=e
Giving thanks starts with God
By Phil Davis
August 07, 2012
[Here are some excerpts:] “I was at a recent Wednesday evening testimony meeting at my Christian Science branch church, listening to the gospel narrative of Jesus’ healing the ten lepers (citation B15, Luke 17:12–19). A corresponding citation from Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy was also read. It says:
“Of the ten lepers whom Jesus healed, but one returned to give God thanks,—that is, to acknowledge the divine Principle which had healed him” (cit. S17, S&H, p. 94).
… if God did it, if He is responsible for it, then give Him the credit!
LOVE INTO VIEW OUR SHEPHERD’S DIVINE SUPPLY AS INEXHAUSTIBLE!
[Warren:] To frequently remind me of this, I brought home from my January 2020 trip to the Holy Land both a spoon cradle and T-shirts with the graphic of an ancient mosaic of the loaves and fish. (See online Downloads at the bottom.) The T-shirt has this reminder that is perfect for all Christians as well as all CedarS workers and donors to live by:
“LOVE IS LIKE FIVE LOAVES AND TWO FISH.
ALWAYS TOO LITTLE UNTIL YOU START TO GIVE IT AWAY”
Below are Cobbey Crisler’s insights on Mark’s version of the feeding of the multitude. [Cobbey Crisler on the start of citation B17 that comes right before his feeding the 5,000:] “Mark 6, Verse 34 (citation B17). And he sees that “they were as sheep not having a shepherd.”
Look up that comment and you will find it in the Old Testament. Then read around it in the Old Testament to get the context of it. You will hardly find a statement by Jesus that does not have an Old Testament root or precedent, which is why he is always saying, “It is written.” But, many of the times when he doesn’t say it-is-written, it is implied.
The only so-called miracle in all four gospels is the feeding of the “five thousand,” Verses 35-44. I put it in quotes because they were only counting the men. Out of the little boy’s lunch box comes five loaves and two fishes. We hear that from the gospel of John Chapter 6, Verse 13. They feed a multitude. Now we have a lesson on economics given to us by the Master. He didn’t regard that as a problem either. No Malthusian limitation on man that we’re going to outgrow our supply, and, therefore, we should kill off sectors of the human race in order to meet the supply. That’s Malthus and his philosophy of necessity. But we find Jesus saying instead in Matthew 14:16, “They need not depart.” Malthus says they need to be killed, but Jesus is saying, “They need not depart.”
Mark 6.37. The disciples say it would be impossible to feed the multitude, that it would take about “two hundred pennyworth.” The group was considerably more than five thousand if you count the women and the children.
What Jesus said to all the disciples made them become part of the remedy. Twelve baskets were taken around. There were twelve disciples. Each one was made to participate in the abundant result and learn from it. They started out with only five loaves and two fishes. They ended up with more fragments left over than they had when they started out. More available. That’s divine economics. It doesn’t exhaust.”
“What Mark Recorded,” by B. Cobbey Crisler**
LISTEN TO or read a classic GEM of article that was inspired by the sentence in Science and Health on page 230 (line 3, between lines 1-2 and 4 in citation S26.) Milton Simon wrote it in the February 1949 Christian Science Journal with the title of “WITH DRUGS, OR WITHOUT.” It clearly shows the importance of waking to see disease as only an illusion to cast it out. (It’s also featured on Disk 9 of Anthology of Classic Articles II.
Click to HEAR it at: https://journal.christianscience.com/audioplayer/shareview/7zh9chpc2o
Or click to read it at: https://journal.christianscience.com/shared/view/7zh9chpc2o?s=e
JSH-Online is the official website of The Christian Science Journal, Sentinel, and Herald.
