Sunday, July 31st, 2022 Roundtable
The Healing Power of Divine Love
This week’s Lesson Sermon Subject: Love
Click here to play the audio as you read:
Morning Prayers
Ask God to give thee skill
In comfort’s art:
That thou may’st consecrated be
And set apart
Unto a life of sympathy.
For heavy is the weight of ill
In every heart;
And comforters are needed much
Of Christlike touch
— A. E. Hamilton
— from Retrospection and Introspection by Mary Baker Eddy, page 95
Abide in Love. Nothing can touch or harm you in Love. Know that you live in Love. Love is God as Life itself. Take this understanding with you and bless others with Love.
— from Divinity Course and General Collectanea, (the “Blue Book”), by Mary Baker Eddy, page 229
Discussion points
36 — WATCH lest you fail to discriminate between Love as the infinite good reflected by man, of which man is the full expression, and the human misinterpretation and misuse of it. If you permit your concept of love to become darkened through the material sense of it which you see in the world, you may become so prejudiced against it, afraid of it, that you fail to cultivate it as a spiritual quality derived from God. If the human perversion of love seems so obnoxious that you endeavor to crush out or repress all tender affections, you may throw overboard the very thing most needed for your salvation, since love is truly the link between the human and the divine.
When you see one misusing love, or personalizing it, remember that he is heavenly homesick and yearning for God; but because he does not know this, he accepts a human substitute. If the Master did not condemn Mary Magdalen, but healed her by feeding her famished affections spiritually, Christian Scientists should not condemn one who has suffered enough from his mistake to be ready for divine Love.
If the top of a tree has been bent over into the ground, so that it is growing down instead of up, you do not kill the tree or cut it off. You pull the top out of the ground and leave it free to grow toward the light. Good healers are the only good teachers. A musician must sing or play well and is judged by his performance, not by his blab. Science is practice, proof, not a profession, neither high-toned wit or philosophy; these are but apologies for its absence, if they possess not the spirit that heals both sickness and sin.”
— from 500 Watching Points by Gilbert Carpenter
GOLDEN TEXT: Psalm 31 : 23
“O love the Lord, all ye his saints: for the Lord preserveth the faithful, and plentifully rewardeth the proud doer.”
Forum posts — Forum: Love — July 31st, 2022
“No Big Power Veto “, from 1948 Association Address, by Herbert E. Rieke
Article The Power of Prayer by Gilbert C. Carpenter, Sr.
Article — “Love Your Enemies” by Mary Baker Eddy
Book Discerning the Rights of Man by Richard Oakes
Article — Taking Offense by Mary Baker Eddy