GEMs of God’s Universal Control proved when Actively Applied!
God Expressed Meekly/Mightily in you sparkle brightly with this PARTIAL SHARING of insights from Cobbey Crisler & others
as inspired by The Christian Science Quarterly Bible Lesson on
“Is the Universe, Including Man, Evolved by Atomic Force?”
for Sunday, June 18, 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
GOD PROMISE PROVES to be continuously FULFILLED to “MAKE PEACE within (CedarS) BORDERS” and to STAFF (CedarS) with “the FINEST of the WHEAT!”
During CedarS 2023 opening session it’s a fun blessing to be reminded of God’s continually fulfilled promise to Ruth Huff’s prayer about staff with this Responsive Reading Bible opening reassurance to her about wonderful staff being divinely directed to serve at CedarS: “He maketh peace (CedarS 2023 theme) within thy borders, and filleth thee with the finest of the wheat.” (Ps. 147:14)
Ruth wrote: “Divine Mind made staffing easy that first summer. (1962) In answer to my inquiry about finding a wonderful staff, the Bible opening promised, “He… filleth thee with the finest of the wheat.” (Psalm 147:14) … all were very spiritually minded and proficient. Divine Mind brought each individual to CedarS. We knew that we were blessed with “the finest of the wheat.” God’s promises are kept.” CEDARS CAMPS, ITS ORIGIN AND GROWTH, 1962-2001, written by Ruth E. Huff, Founder, Illustrated and Designed by Kristin Joy Pratt-Serafini
ANSWERED PRAYER PROOF#1 shared in a “Prac Talk”
In a 6-14-23 Breakfast Prac Talk Kerry Jenkins, CS, discussed the budding of Aaron’s rod from the Bible Lesson (Num. 17:1-8). She also tells of what seems like a CedarS miracle of a fire extinguished by rain from a clear blue sky. (at 6 minutes into a 10-min. talk at this link: https://cedarscamps.org/inspiration/article/june-14th-gods-laws-vs-miracles/
ANSWERED PRAYER PROOF #2 from applying a precious G.E.M. from this week’s C.S. Bible lesson: “A knowledge of the Science of being develops the latent abilities and possibilities of man. It extends the atmosphere of thought, giving mortals access to broader and higher realms. It raises the thinker into his native air of insight and perspicacity.” (citation S14/128:14)
[Warren Huff:] Keeping our solemn 6th Tenet “promise to watch and pray for that mind to be in us that was also in Christ Jesus” (SH 495) we should expect to inherently have access to the divine insights and “higher realms” results that Jesus demonstrated and to confidently answer every question rightly because of our at-one with “the all-knowing, all-seeing, all-acting, all-wise, all-loving, and eternal” (SH 587:5).
I am in awe to have glimpsed an introductory demonstration of this during my first year-end final exams at Princeton University. Due to praying and hymn-singing my way to a permanent healing of appendicitis on the weekend right before five 3-hr. final exams on Monday and Tuesday, I did not have an opportunity to do normal academical preparation and review as planned.
But I had thoroughly read and actively applied to myself the Bible Lesson that week and was “on fire” about the healing glow of complete well-being that resulted.
The Bible lesson that week and my active application of it to myself included God giving me answers like he did to Joseph so that he could confidently answering Pharaoh’s question about the humanly unknowable meaning of his dream (Genesis 41:1-57) I reasoned that this was mine too and that God would give me the angel insights I needed to cherish to be healed of the aggressive mental and physical challenge I was experiencing as well as what I needed to study and what to write on my upcoming exams. I loved that Joseph shared how the way to humbly do this by telling Pharaoh, “it is not in me: God shall give … an answer of peace.”(Genesis 41:16).
I also distinctly remember feeling great relief in affirming for myself the truth that, “When man is governed by God, the ever-present Mind who understands all things, man knows that with God all things are possible.” (SH 180:25) More lessons from the Comforter that I cherished during my Reading Room study came back to bless me big-time after I got my healing and was taking my finals.
… I felt divinely inspired to review just what I needed to know and felt great and full of gratitude to God about my first four exams.
However, when I turned over the fifth exam on Tuesday afternoon, my heart dropped as I read all the exam questions which ask me to compare and contrast several books that I had intended to read over the weekend but did not given the time I needed to spend in the Reading Room having my healing. I was seriously tempted at first to just go up to the exam proctor and turn in the exam with a note that I’d had a health challenge and was unable to adequately prepare for the exam and to ask to take the course on a Pass-Fail basis so that my work going into the final could at least get me a “Pass” on my transcript.
As I stood up to walk up and give up, rather than try to write about books that I hadn’t even read, an angel message stopped me saying “the same Mind that made this test and that wrote every book is your Mind that wrote this exam and is taking it. I will tell you everything you need to know.”
I gained confidence from this and from remembering other ideas from the Bible lesson that I had cherished and made my own during my healing, spiritual study time in the Reading Room on the weekend before the exams.
They included these passages from Science and Health, the first of which is also in this week’s C.S. Bible lesson:
“A knowledge of the Science of being develops the latent abilities and possibilities of man. It extends the atmosphere of thought, giving mortals access to broader and higher realms. It raises the thinker into his native air of insight and perspicacity.” (128:14, citation S14)
“It is the prerogative of the ever-present, divine Mind, and of thought in rapport with this Mind, to know the past, the present, and the future.Acquaintance with the Science of being enables us to commune more largely with the divine Mind… to be divinely inspired, yea, to reach the range of fetterless Mind.” (84:11-18)
“This (spiritual) understanding is not intellectual, is not the result of scholarly attainments, it is the reality of all things brought to light.” (505:26-28)
I sat back down with a confidently constant prayer to joyously glorify God by being a clear transparency, a scribe under orders. I was determined to not try to make up myself what I humanly didn’t know, but to merely make it welcome. Ideas flowed and I effortlessly wrote them down. At the end of the three hours I handed in the exam with joy. To my delight and amazement I found out the next day that my grade actually improved to an A-. All glory to God!! What cannot good do for you too when you, like Joseph, know that “it is not in me. God shall give (me every)… answer” that I need, and I know it!
ANSWERED PRAYER PROOF #3 in a 6/15/23 Breakwithfast “Prac Talk” by Kerry Jenkins, C.S. titled
“Expect God to Work Wonders, Every Day!” (click to hear)
After sharing from Joshua 3:7-17 (citation B14) in the Bible Lesson, how the flow of a flooded Jordan River was stopped to allow the Ark of the Covenant to lead the Children of Israel into the Promised Land, Kerry told of a tradition started by CedarS Founder Ruth Huff. Anytime adverse circumstances arise, we still expectantly recall and rely on her always effective prayer: “It will be fun to see how God will work one this out!”
Kerry told of how Warren’s deep, peaceful confidence that “God’s Got This!” brought about “freakly fast” funding of a big need. Weeks before camp in 1993 a contractor who was building the Basketball Pavilion said to do the job right would take $100,000 more to also replace the roof over the Dawn Lodge/Dining Room. Warren felt the deep joy and peace of this CedarS/Christian mindset to “Meet every adverse circumstance as its master,” (SH 419) for a few minutes before taking a happy call from an unknown caller from California. They said “it just came to me that you might need some money. Would $100,000 help?” (If you’d like to hear more, Warren related this and several other examples more fully in his Inspirational Talk for the second half of the 2022 Arden Wood Annual Meeting that you can click to view on YouTube.
JESUS’ GAVE PROOFS of ordered government of heaven and harmony at hand that SOLVED ALL PROBLEMS!
[Cobbey Crisler on citation B18:] “Matthew 4, Verse 23. And “healing all manner of sickness and all manner of disease.” Here are human problems that had defied solution, and Jesus solved them all based on his concept of theology, namely the kingdom. Remember a kingdom is not chaos. It’s an ordered government of heaven and harmony at hand.”
“Book of Matthew, Auditing the Master, A Tax Collector’s Report,” by B. Cobbey Crisler**
Mary Baker Eddy FORESAW PROOF of “the IMMENSITY of SPACE” and God’s UNIVERSE/Kingdom
“… as nebulae indicate the immensity of space” (Science and Health 509:18)
Here’s on of several examples of how Mary Baker Eddy in writing Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures was ahead of her time in referring to this phenomenon that had not yet been discovered or explained scientifically. She could only do this by humbly, sincerely listening to her all-knowing, divine Mind.
A Christian Scientist friend of mine, Chuck Douglas, was an avid amateur astronomer and the Kansas City dad of CedarS staff friends, Charlie Douglas, Carol Douglas and Elaine Douglas (Boudreaux). Chuck had the wisdom and the occasion to ask a professional astronomer what a woman author could have meant when she stated “even as nebulae indicate the immensity of space.” (SH 509:18) The astronomer asked when this insightful observation was made and was amazed that Mary Baker Eddy wrote the first edition of Science & Health in 1875 and its last (418th) edition in 1906. He explained that it was not until 1929 when American astronomer, Edwin Hubble (who the Hubble Space Telescope is named after) was the first to describe the redshift phenomenon and tie it to an expanding universe and exploding stars (nebulae) as explained further at https://www.space.com/25732-redshift-blueshift.html In 1990 when the Hubble Space telescope was launch into its orbit around the earth astronomers’ able to see more distant nebulae and to measure the speed at which their exploding light was simultaneously moving towards observers at light speed in a blueshift spectrum of light and away from us at light speed in a redshift spectrum of light. If you download the amazing pictures of the red and blue light from Helix Nebulae (in the upper right part of thus GEM’s online version), imagine this and countless other nebulae expanding in opposite directions at the speed of light of 186,282 miles per second—with no end in sight! Now, that “indicates immensity”!
