Work…does it have to be laborious?


The word “work” often has a negative connotation when one is thinking about something they have to do or a job they need to go to. It may be prefaced with “ugh” or some other deliberation.

Actually, our “work” is something that is natural to us – glorifying and expressing God! There isn’t any labor or heaviness associated with this. In fact, expressing God’s qualities – joy, compassion, creativity, grace, love, wisdom – actually gives us energy! I’m sure we’ve all experienced instances of this whether you’re an artist, business person or stay-at-home parent; it’s when you get that moment of clarity – a new insight or solution to a problem – and a burst of energy comes with it.

Expressing God, consciously embodying spiritual qualities in thought and acting on them throughout the day, gives us renewal and clarity.

So let’s not think of work as anything but expressing and glorifying God. This comes so naturally and easily to us. It will make our day invigorated with energy and hope and we will come across many opportunities to give to others.

Mary Baker Eddy writes, “Constant toil, deprivations, exposures, and all untoward conditions, if without sin, can be experienced with out suffering. Whatever it is your duty to do, you can do without harm to yourself.”

“You say, ‘Toil fatigues me.’ But what is this me? Is it muscle or mind? Which is tired and so speaks? Without mind, could the muscles be tired?…You do not say a wheel is fatigued; and yet the body is as material as the wheel. If it were not for what the human mind says of the body, the body, like the inanimate wheel, would never be weary. The consciousness of Truth rests us more than hours of repose in unconsciousness.”

Christ Jesus says,

“Consider how the wild flowers grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you, not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today, and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, how much more will he clothe you—you of little faith!” Luke 12:27-28 NIV

It is worry and fretting which make us tired. Fearing a mentally projected outcome makes a project/job daunting.

However, we rest on God’s law of harmony. Harmony is a natural activity; it fills all space and governs all things regardless of background, age, gender, etc. We don’t have to make harmony go into effect. It always is. The law of harmony enforces itself.

So whether you are working on a project or some other task, you can go forward knowing that you already have everything you need. God’s spiritual qualities that you express are adequate for any situation you will find yourself in.

“…those who wait on the Lord
Shall renew their strength;
They shall mount up with wings like eagles,
They shall run and not be weary,
They shall walk and not faint.”  Isaiah 40:31 NKJV

Repost: Living a full life

This is a beautiful post published on The Christian Science Monitor website.

Time to get a life?

“Time – too little or too much – can be opposite ends of the same stick, the heart’s yearning to live a life that’s full but not frantic, happy instead of haphazard, purposeful without stress.” Read more…

Bringing God into the minutiae of your day

“Spiritual sense is the constant, conscious capacity to know and understand God.”

“…spiritual sense lifts human consciousness into eternal Truth.”

“Spiritual sense, contradicting the material senses, involves intuition, hope, faith, understanding, fruition, reality.”

Unknown: “That which spiritual sense alone comprehends , and which is unknown to the material senses.”

We all have a spiritual sense. Spiritual sense is the means through which Spirit/God, divine intelligence, guides us. This spiritual sense is something that we all have but it must be cultivated. We have to practice using it so we don’t get rusty.

Try going through each day using your spiritual sense. Sometimes we may think there are things too small to be guided about. But God is always governing his children, always guiding them, caring for them even in the minutiae of our every day. Cultivating this conscious, constant communion with God shows us that we are never alone. We always have our Best Friend, our Father, Mother, God with us.

Our Father-Mother is governing each day perfectly. We are part of an interconnected orchestration of being. This interconnectedness is in perfect harmony and is like God’s great song, a beautiful melody.

But in order to hear this orchestration of being, we have to be still and listen. The “still, small voice” talked about in the Bible is governing our everyday affairs. It requires obedience, receptivity, and flexibility to follow it.

Let me give you one example:

I was out doing some errands on my bike. I felt strongly impelled that I should only go to the first stop on my list. However, after the first stop I protested against this spiritual intuition with “human reason”. When would I get the other things done? Why shouldn’t I go? What is the reason? The human mind has a hard time with the “unknown”.

So I went to the next stop. When I got to this place, I discovered they didn’t have what I needed. The trip to this place was totally unnecessary. Part of God’s Principle of harmony is that nothing is in excess and nothing is deficient. There is just the right, needed amount of everything. Our days are ordered by this Principle so there is just the right amount of time needed to do everything. There isn’t too much time or too little time. When we governed by this divine Mind, everything in our day flows together perfectly.

However, my attempt at “human reasoning” to try to solve the problems of the day had really been a lack of trust or faith in God. I didn’t trust that the all-knowing, all-seeing Mind might know more about what was going on than I did.

I learned my lesson, and I am practicing listening to the still, small voice no matter what self-validation the human mind tries to pull.

This Principle of harmony tells us where to go, when to go, tells us what we should purchase, what we don’t need to purchase, shows us what we can give, and who we should call. This spiritual intuition gives us peace, stability, and health. And by listening and obeying it we are ready, we have the tools, for anything that might come into our day.

The quotes in this post are from the book Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy