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PSST: How can spiritual sense help us rejoice in the REALITY in “an expected end”?
(especially see Responsive Reading, Sections 3, 6)
Possible Sunday School Topics for the Christian Science Quarterly Bible Lesson on
“REALITY”
for classes on September 25, 2022
Questions by former CedarS Program Director, Steve Henn, C.S. steven.henn@gmail.com
POSSIBLE SUNDAY SCHOOL TOPICS (PSSTs) for the GOLDEN TEXT/1st John 1:5
“God is light, and in him is no darkness at all.”
Share the allegory of the sun and the cave with your students.
Why is it that the sun cannot see darkness? How does this relate to God as light?
What qualities of light relate to God; what qualities are of darkness that God overcomes and defeats?
POSSIBLE SUNDAY SCHOOL TOPICS (PSSTs) for the RESPONSIVE READING (RR):
What cause do your students have to rejoice? (1st John 1:4)
What manifestations of God and light have been present in their lives this past week?
How can they grow more expectant of God’s light and good on a daily basis?
What can they do when they don’t feel like they can see or feel God’s light?
POSSIBLE SUNDAY SCHOOL TOPICS (PSSTs) for the SECTION 1:
How do your students understand reality?
Do they begin from the basis of God as all?
How does it impact our reasoning to begin this way?
ACTIVITY: Take any experience with your students, perhaps a test, or a game, or an event with friends – and explain the event beginning from a material basis, and then explain it again from a spiritual basis. What differences show up in the two different interpretations?
How does interpreting events by beginning with “God as the Principle of all that really is” help us see reality more clearly? (cit. S1/275:10)
POSSIBLE SUNDAY SCHOOL TOPICS (PSSTs) for the SECTION 2:
How can we see challenges more clearly?
How must Hagar have felt when she was first separated from her tribe? [cit. B5/Genesis 21:9-20)
Was there ever a moment when she wasn’t cared for by Love?
How do (or can) your students respond when they are faced with challenges that seem to give evidence that they are separated from Soul or Life? (cit. S6/12-24)
How can we learn to trust in God no matter what the material, limited picture may be presenting to us? (cit. S9/326:20)
POSSIBLE SUNDAY SCHOOL TOPICS (PSSTs) for the SECTION 3:
What thoughts does God think of us? MEMORIZATION PASSAGE: citation B6/Jeremiah 29:11, 13.
“I know the thoughts that I think toward you, saith the LORD, thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give you an expected end. …
And ye shall seek me, and find me, when ye shall search for me with all your heart.”
Have your students memorize this passage and think about how it applies to their week.
What activities, events, potential challenges do they have coming up this week?
How does this passage specifically help them to navigate their week ahead?
What is the deeper meaning behind this passage?
What are some examples of peaceful thoughts God has about us?
What does the peaceful end promise?
And what are we expected to do in order to find God? (cit. S11/272:3-5)
POSSIBLE SUNDAY SCHOOL TOPICS (PSSTs) for the SECTION 4:
FIRST LESSONS: What are the core points of Jesus’ teachings?
Spend some time with your students in the Sermon on the Mount.
How does that sermon help to clarify what the great light is that people were able to see?
How do Jesus’ teachings in the Sermon on the Mount help us to “resolve the dark visions of material sense into harmony and immortality”? (cit. S16/428:3)
How does the Sermon on the Mount teach us to turn from a material view to a spiritual one (cit. S18/316:3-7)
POSSIBLE SUNDAY SCHOOL TOPICS (PSSTs) for the SECTION 5:
Have your students ever had an “aha!” moment, one where they saw something in an entirely new light and understood the world around them differently because of it?
What does it take to have this kind of revelation?
What sort of mindset must we have, and what qualities must we express to be ready for a dramatic insight?
How does Saul/Paul get to this mental space? (cit. B13/Acts 26:12-19)
How willing are your students to enter that mental space?
How can we develop a sensitivity to God’s paradigm-altering inspiration? (cit. S23/20:24-25, 27)
POSSIBLE SUNDAY SCHOOL TOPICS (PSSTs) for the SECTION 6:
How does Mary Baker Eddy define spiritual sense? (“Spiritual sense is a conscious, constant capacity to understand God.” cit. S26/209:31-32)
Come back to the list of qualities you’ve made for light and dark, from the Golden Text – how does this list help us to consciously understand God?
How can we keep this conscious understanding of God in thought constantly?
