Happy New Year, learning what God, good, has already done for you lately! (Com. #4)
A SS Care Package of ideas on how to daily apply this week’s Bible lesson for your happiest New Year yet!
GT & RR: “In thy name (nature) shall they rejoice all the day:” even all the year! God’s nature (and yours by reflection) is worth knowing better, celebrating and magnifying! The RR ends with “Let God be magnified.” (Ps. 70:4) The purpose of a magnifying glass is to make something larger and easier to see and understand. In preparing to welcome the Christ, Mary said: “My soul (spiritual sense) doth magnify the Lord.” (Luke 1:46) Let’s use our soul sense to kick off the New Year by making God’s presence and power easier to see and understand in our lives.
Section 1: God, good, lights the way for you! Nothing is clearly seen in the dark, without night-vision glasses. Use your soul sense (especially in the gloom) to let “the light of the Lord” (B1) clearly reveal the full beauty and color of all that God has created. God’s Love, reflected in the redolence (agreable fragrance) of your “unselfishness, bathes all in beauty and light.” (S4: S&H 516:12) So embrace unselfishness and giving as your innate attitudes that will fill you with light, beauty and happiness!
Section 2: God, good, prospers & blesses you with “infinite resources” (S9) as you choose and follow “the way” of the commandments. When Hezekiak chose to keep the commandments, “the Lord was with him:” (because he was with the Lord) “and he prospered whithersoever he went.” (B7: II Kings 18:7) It’s not ours to choose which of the 10 Commandments to keep, but to find fun ways to follow them all. For some ideas, see CedarS fall mets on “Where’s the 10 in 9-11?” and “Ye are God’s building:” 10 Specs . . .
Section 3: God, good, empowers and guides you “on every side” Hezekiah was totally defended against his Assyrian assailants and all others when he humbly prayed for God’s guidance and defense and acknowledged God as the only power. What is arguing to be a power apart from God in your world? Every 3rd section citation in Science and Health contains the word “power” and and develops the concept that God is the only power. List how an all-seeing and all-powerful God guiding you “on every side,” (B11: II Chron. 32:22) will help you in basketball, pom routines, academics, social and college choices.
Section 4: Only God, good, can bring you lasting peace and healing (See CS Hymn #263) Why accept just temporary relief? Again Hezekiah’s tearful prayers pay off and this time save him from a terminal illness. (B13: II Kings 20: 1-5) Get God’s help to take the U (and you) out of your moUrning and turn it into “MORNING: Light; . . . revelation and progress” (S&H 591:23) and into a jubulant pom routine! (B14: Ps. 30:11) Pick a favorite passage to memorize and share in Sunday School class (& in a testimony meeting) how it has helped you. Consider cherishing for a lifetime Job 22:21, S&H 1:1-4 and 506:11-12. In all things, remember that, “loving attention makes memory inevitable.” (Grace Wasson, CSB in 1960)
Section 5: God, good, tells you all things Just as Jesus told the Samaritan woman “all things that ever I did,” (B17, John 4:29) so the Christ lovingly informs you of all things you need to know and leads you in all things you need to do, precisely when you need to know and do them. Like a reflection that instantly and effortlessly does just what the original is doing, Jesus accepted his role as a stress-free reflection, claiming “I of mine own self do nothing” (John 5:30) and “my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” (Matt. 11:30) Look for ways that understanding your role as relection can lighten your load today. In almost every Science & Health citation of Section 5, the words “reflection” and “divine image and likeness” (D.I.A.L.) appear. “Aren’t you glad you use D.I.A.L. (Divine Image And Likeness)? Don’t you wish everyone did?”
Section 6: God, good, demands you to step-by-step purify your desires and put off sin & mortality. Consider this section an hourly quiz and ask yourself: a) What’s my next step right now to “walk my talk” toward my divine identity? “For God hath not called us unto uncleanness, but unto holiness.” (B23: I Thessalonians 4:7) b) In what atmosphere might I better hear God’s call to holiness and answer it aright? c) If I foolishly buy into today’s enslaving cult of body worship and agree to be pushed around by it, how can my “affections and aims grow spiritual . . . and gain some proper sense of the infinite, — in order that sin and mortality may be put off?” (S27: S&H 11:265:5) d) Do I consider putting off materiality and sensuality as a big sacrifice, or as God’s gracious, freeing release from undesireable bonds and limits, whereby I am “winged to reach the divine glory” (S30: S&H 323:12) of my divine identity? (My D.I.A.L. i.d. – Divine Image And Likeness status of Genesis 1? e) Am I finally ready to stop buying into the uncleanness and slavery of PMS status? (The Predestined Miserable Sinner – fake i.d. – of Genesis 2)
