God’s Gift is Eternal Life.

This week’s lesson is on Life. Years ago, this was a hard lesson for me to understand, especially the idea of eternal life, now I understand it. I am going to try to share my understanding of eternal life with you. Many of you may already have a concept of what eternal life is, but I know that reminders are good ways to keep ideas fresh in our thought.

First, I had to get rid of the idea that this flesh and blood body had anything at all to do with eternal life. It does not. The Bible tells us in I John 2:25. “And this is the promise that he hath promised us, even eternal life.” Mrs. Eddy writes in Science and Health, with key to the scriptures, page 361:16. “As a drop of water is one with the ocean, a ray of light one with the sun, even so God and man, Father and son are one in being. The Scripture reads: “For in Him we live, and move, and have our being.” We are one with God.

Any time Jesus used the phrase, “I and my Father are one.” He was referring to the Scripture mentioned above.  As God’s idea, we reflect his life, which is eternal. I know, I know, some are thinking, well what about this flesh and blood body. Keep in mind that though we walk in the flesh, we live in the Spirit. This body is externalized thought. We are what we think we are, so be very careful what you think. When this body is gone, we still live in the Spirit.

I want to talk about unfoldment here. This concept helped me to understand. Take a piece of paper, for instance, folded up as tight as can be, and imagine it is filled with all that God created, and it is spiritual and eternal, it is complete, nothing can be put to it or taken from it. Consider, though we have always been, we are just coming into conscious awareness and do not know yet who we are.

Somehow, we manage to get a misconception of who we are, and we misconceive our reality and take on a flesh and blood experience. In this experience, we have a life filled with sin, sickness, and death; this is not God’s creation. Many of us go through this life, making poor choices. We become subject to other peoples whims.  We get confused and do not understand what our purpose is. We develop feelings like anger, hate, and resentment. We are completely lost. This is walking in the flesh.

Then for some of us, one day, something occurs in our thought, and we begin asking questions. Who am I? What am I? Where am I? Why am I? When am I? We start searching for answers. This is when the unfoldment begins. One fold at a time, we begin to discover who we really are. It is like the petals of a flower opening.

“Who am I? I am an individual spiritual consciousness.  What am I? I am the image and likeness of God, a spiritual idea, an expression of the infinite, the reflection of God’s being. Where am I? I am right here in God’s universe, never outside His presence, control, or influence. Because I am God centered, I am always in my right place.  Why am I? I exist to fulfill God’s will. To bear witness to what He is, to Glorify Him, to manifest His qualities.  When am I? I exist at this moment, right now, always in eternity, neither past nor future, but in the eternal now!” This is from an old article I read many years ago, titled “Do you know who you are?” I searched but could not find the authors name.

I discovered the more I kept my thought on the spiritual ideas I was learning the more my life expressed God’s creation. This is how my life unfolded. I became more courageous and less fearful. Life became more enjoyable and less gloomy. My health improved. I became more satisfied and less irritable. I felt safe, secure, and less vulnerable.  I felt less a victim of circumstances and more victorious. My life became orderly and unruffled. I became happy and free. This is God’s Life.

The idea of who we are unfolds very slowly from within. Little by little, we discover we are an expression of Life, God. Filled with compassion, we cannot help but reach out to other expressions of God, and we live in a world of peace and harmony. We have sensationless bodies; we cannot sin or be sick because that would imply that God could sin and be sick. We cannot die, as that would mean God could die. This is God’s perfect Creation. This is living in the Spirit. 

When we know our true essence is spiritual and live our flesh and blood existence from that perspective, our life becomes more an expression of God’s creation.  When we leave this experience, we are still a living expression of God, existing eternally with Him, all of us, no exceptions.

I did not reach these conclusions overnight. It took a lot of study, research, and deep thought. I made mistakes and still do. I learned never to berate myself for mistakes I just correct them. In school, if we made a mistake, we fixed it. We did not beat ourselves up over it.

So go out there with the purest of thought, and see how your life changes.

I hope this made sense to you. I am always here if anyone has questions.

“… to be spiritually minded is life…” Rom. 8:6