the-good-shepherd-you-are-mine-2
lamb-i-will-dwell-in-the-house-of-the-lord-for-evercomfort-is-thine-1
KEN’S POETIC PRELUDE for this week’s Christian Science Quarterly Bible Lesson on:
“God the Preserver of Man” for June 13, 2021
HEAR on YouTube a KEN COOPER POEM, “The Good Shepherd – You Are Mine” . Plus enjoy a related poem: “Comfort is thine” and a dear PDF image of a lamb, “I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever”. All bring extra inspiration to this week’s Bible Lesson.
[Ken wrote:] “Infinite God means infinite Love: they are one and the same. Father-Mother Love is the maximum and minimum love that can be and is given. What God loves is the expression of what God is. As there is nothing in God’s infinite kingdom separate from Father-Mother, our status as the expression of God, Mind, Soul, Love is inseparable and therefore always preserved. It does not need protection , for there is nothing else than All-in-all. The statement of the Golden Text is said with the unchallenged authority of the Word, as reflected and spoken by Moses: “..The beloved of the Lord shall dwell in safety by him; and the Lord shall cover him all the day long, and he shall dwell between his shoulders.” (Deuteronomy 33:2) . Later in that chapter we also have “The eternal God is thy refuge, and underneath are the everlasting arms:”. Deut. 33:27 (to 🙂
This can be seen both in the image of the Good Shepherd who shall “gather the lambs with his arm”, as a loving Dad might hold his son / daughter upon his shoulders, and the image of a good mother being a source of loving comfort. In the first section we have these two clear images, – that of Shepherd (Father) (citation B1) and that of a Mother (cit. B2). Each includes the other.
The poem “The Good Shepherd – You Are Mine” shares the preservation of infinite unconditional Love. As with the Prodigal Son, the Father was always watching. Although the sheep was “missing” – it was only the sheep that felt lost, the false belief of mortal thought. Nothing is ever lost to infinite Mind, infinite Love. Whenever we turn to God, He is already there, whenever faced with a problem, Truth has already freed us from its falsity.
The concept of everlasting arms resonates so fully with the first section “as one whom his mother comforteth, so shall I comfort you”, (cit. B2) and the poem “Comfort is thine” takes the synonyms of Life, Truth and Love as each giving and preserving their own qualities.
Both poems have the theme “You are Mine”, – each of us is God’s thought, inseparable from all that God is. We are God’s, and nobody else’s. We are held in “perfect now” as God’s expression of himself, the demonstration of which is the NOW of “SALVATION. Life, Truth, and Love understood and demonstrated as supreme over all; sin, sickness, and death destroyed.” (Science & Health 593:20). The preservation of man is now, not a far-off event, and that preservation is seen in the activity of man doing what man does, reflecting God.
Feeling the comfort of God’s infinite Love, understanding our present salvation, is the grace that fills our hearts, and is shared with others.
What greater sense of peace and love can we seek and experience. We have the grace of God, and it is infinitely good. This grace is as preserved as is man, it is the glory of God put into practice.
Copies of the poems can be found in PDF in color and B&W in the top right of the webpage for this email as well as on the webpage for this week’s metaphysical article. Also included is a dear PDF image of a lamb, “I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever”,
