Car collision

I was driving down the highway through a small town today, 35-40 mph, and a car coming in the opposite direction suddenly did a left turn in front of me with no warning.

At first I couldn’t believe my eyes. I thought, “This can’t be happening.” But it was happening, and no matter how much I swerved to the right, the other car was determined to turn left and there was no avoiding him. We crashed. Airbags inflated. Seatbelts locked. Liquid spewed on the ground, smoke and offensive odors filled our cabin.

The other driver has admitted full responsibility for the accident, saying he did not see me, and claims his insurance will cover all expenses. I expect no troubles in settling with him.

Nonetheless, it took me a while to recover from the accident happening in the first place. I had done nothing wrong. I had broken no laws. I was driving safely and responsibly, yet a horrible crash still occurred. His car looked totaled and mine may well be too.

Gratefully, all people involved are fine. My son and I were totally unscathed. The driver’s wife was taken to the hospital for minor care, but is comfortably home this evening. It seemed a miracle considering the force of impact and direction of hit.

Again, how could I be involved in such a horrible event when I did nothing wrong?

In searching for a spiritual lesson to learn from the experience, I decided it’s absolutely essential to actively pray for the safety and wisdom of every driver on the highway. Praying for one's own driving is not good enough.

When uniting with others in a common activity, liking cruising down a road full of cars, we are dwelling in a common mental venue. To a degree, what one participant thinks, or doesn’t think, affects what other participants in the same venue experience. We cannot be naïve about other people’s states of thought in our common mental venues. We must pray for everyone’s protection and safety to be safe ourselves. God’s love is all-inclusive, and our prayers, to be answered, must be all-inclusive.

I have frequently prayed for all drivers on the road, but after today, I can see I need to pray more.

My family and I prayed together tonight and thanked God for all four people involved in the accident being alive and well. And we committed ourselves to praying regularly for all other drivers on the road as much as we pray for our own safe and wise driving,--which is a considerable amount of time spent, by the way...

When everyone in the world is praying as much for others as they pray for themselves, oh, what a wonderful world it will be! And the highways will be safer too.

The Israelis, the Palestinians, and land

The Hizballahs attacked the Israelis with rockets over Israel’s northern border, and the Israelis are counter-attacking fiercely. There’s fear of a larger conflict erupting in an already red-hot Middle East.

Will the conflict between the Palestinians and Israelis ever cease?

Some say there is no common ground between the Israelis and Palestinians. They both want a plot of acreage the other claims as their own.

If this is true, there’s only one way the conflict will be resolved, and that’s when each party has higher desires than a parcel of land.

“Love one another,” is a dictum common to most religions. If more citizens of the world put this divine command into practice, we’d have less war and more peace.
What matters the most in the long run? I ask myself. A piece of land we call our own, or the spirituality and spiritual mindedness we express whether we own land or not?

Eventually, everyone leaves this earth, Palestinians and Israelis included. What matters then? Is it the ground left behind, or the spirituality taken with us? I think it’s the spirituality we take with us.

Let’s pray that the world values the things of Love above the things of the earth. The more we love, the less we fight.

Yes, there are times when military force appears to be the only option available to maintain order. But over the long run, love, love, love is the approach that is going to bring permanent peace to this troubled planet.

Love is more important than land.

And the neat part is, when love does dominate the opposing side’s thought, hatred will dissolve, and ways to share the land in peace will be discovered and mutually embraced.

Truth and insults

French soccer star Zidane has been billed as the greatest soccer player of his generation. After his head-butt of Italian player Materazzi in the World Cup Final he’s now even more famous for not controlling his temper.

Zidane claims Materazzi repeatedly insulted him on the field. One insult too much, he felt, justified a head butt. And the rest became red-hot headline news.

I pray that we all learn from Zidane’s experience.

Was the head-butt really worth the sacrifice in reputation and dignity Zidane has suffered since?

If Zidane had been able to keep his presence of mind and ignore Materazzi’s taunts, which could have been intended to produce the very results they caused, the world would have known nothing about it. The game would have ended, maybe differently, and the dark words long forgotten as empty verbose.

Cussing, swearing, heckling, mocking and name calling are nothing new. Millions of people face some form of this unpleasantness everyday.

If there was truth behind the insults, that would be one thing. But so often, there is not a shred of fact to be honored. Invective is the taunt of evil to catch us off guard. And we must not get unwarily drawn in.

We can keep our poise by remembering it’s not the words the matter, but the truth.

If someone insults us with a lie, we don’t have to get mad or upset. We can keep our spiritual poise intact and counter with the truth. If the truth is not received, we rely upon the Christ to take care of the rest as we go on with our business.

Only pride and self-righteousness get insulted. We want to do away with these enemies to good character and disposition anyway. So we can love more, react less, trust truth to prevail, and not be intimidated by the insulter. We’ll keep our good reputation intact and not become the victim of an ill-timed head-butt.

Medical mistakes run rampant

A new report states:

• A hospitalized patient is subject to at least one medication error per day.
• 1.5 million Americans are injured from medication mistakes every year.

No one is claiming health-care professionals are intentionally making these errors, but alarm bells are heralding a need for reform and fewer blunders.

Perhaps there’s a larger lesson to learn?

Is it time to value the merits of spiritual treatment where there is no opportunity for medication missteps?

Christian Science is the ultimate form of health-care. It doesn’t rely upon drugs. It doesn’t subject one to human opinion and medical guessing. It relies upon the infallible power of Mind to produce a cure, and it’s been proved by countless thousands over the last century to work.

Applying Christian Science is not as simple as popping a pill. It takes study, faith, prayer, commitment to Truth, and growing spiritual mindedness to obtain results. But most things worth having require work. That’s nothing new.

The long term benefit of practicing Christian Science include freedom from bondage to prescriptions, huge medical bills, focus on the body, and fear about health. Christian Science lifts thought to the higher realm of Spirit where Truth is the most powerful medicine and Mind the most effective physician.

Christian Science works. Give it a try.

Learn all about it in Mary Baker Eddy’s book Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures.

You’ll never fear being victimized by a medical mistake again.

You have all you need

Have you ever waited for more money to come in before you felt like you had enough funds? Have you ever waited for another person to come into your life before you were willing to accept your completeness? Have you ever waited for a sickness to go away before you accepted you were healthy? It’s a tricky thing, how mortal mind convinces us we lack unless a certain material condition is first fulfilled.

Jesus taught exactly the opposite when it came to demonstrating enough. He never waited for a material factor in the world to change before he acknowledged enough. When faced with thousands of hungry people to feed, he didn’t wait for food to show up before he acknowledged there was enough to go around. He went to God, acknowledged there was enough to go around, and then the loaves and fishes were manifested outwardly in abundance.

When faced with sick people wanting relief, Jesus didn’t wait for the person’s body to change before he acknowledged they were well. "Rise and walk," he commanded before there was any outward evidence the lame man could walk. And the man walked.

Twenty years ago, at a time when I feared not having enough money to meet family needs, a lady knocked on our front door early one Saturday morning. I answered, and she handed me a fistful of cash, telling me she didn’t want to hear anything about it. She insisted God had told her to do it. She then turned and left. I stood on the porch awe-struck. I didn't need the money, but I figured I needed a lesson.

In trying to understand what had happened, I realized it was a messenger sent by God telling me that I never needed to worry about having enough money to pay bills. God was our source of supply, and God would ensure we always had everything we needed, whether it was grocery cash, a roof over our head or tuition to pay the kid’s college bills fifteen years into the future. I took the lesson to heart and have rarely worried about having enough money since, and we’ve always had enough even when earnings were very modest.

When we have God we have everything. What more could we want?

Fear over supply is like owning the largest apple orchard in the world and worrying about having an apple to eat. Ridiculous! You would have more apples to eat than you could possibly know what to do with. Likewise with God, when you know He is your source, you never fear lack. There is no lack in God, only abounding substance every minute, every day, every time.

Enjoy the omnipresence of good--the omnipresence of God--and worry no more. You have all you need.

Keep your thought fresh

A pond that sits in isolation with no fresh stream feeding it grows stale, stagnant, and unfriendly to healthy life.

“How do I break out of my rut of stagnation, continual problems and suffering,” a concerned man inquired. I asked him what he did to keep his spiritual perspective fresh. He wasn’t doing anything special he replied. I suggested he develop a routine of daily study that fed his thinking with new spiritual ideas to keep his outlook fresh, invigorated and uplifted. He agreed that he needed to make an effort, and decided to read Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, by Mary Baker Eddy, a few pages at a time.

We all need fresh inspiration everyday. Without new ideas, thought grows stale, stagnant and unfriendly like the neglected pond.

God has provided an ever-flowing stream of inspiration to the human consciousness through inspired writings like the Bible and Science and Health.

Tap into these sources and stay vital and alive! The effort is worth the reward.

You can't buy happiness

Catch this from the Washington Post:

A wealth of data in recent decades has shown that once personal wealth exceeds about $12,000 a year, more money produces virtually no increase in life satisfaction. From 1958 to 1987, for example, income in Japan grew fivefold, but researchers could find no corresponding increase in happiness.

You can’t buy happiness! You’ve heard it before, but science now backs up the old adage.

It’s true. A new car, a new house, a state of the art super-duper highfalutin HDTV screen may create euphoria, but data shows the elation wears off and the consumer once again wants.

Have you ever bought a child a new-fangled toy only to see it plunked in the closet never to be picked up again? How often have adults done the same with toys they purchase?

It’s time to get the right idea of happiness.

Happiness is not a sensual feeling that comes and goes. True happiness is spiritual, a gift of God that we possess as a part of our immortal make-up.

We don’t have to buy something to be happy. We can be happy with or without the thing we’ve been drooling over that probably costs more than we can afford anyway.

“Happiness is spiritual, born of Truth and Love,” Mary Baker Eddy wrote in Science and Health.

Jesus said, “Follow me.” The path he trod was not a gold-paved road down to the local bank. He led his followers to Spirit—to eternal happiness.

How do we find permanent joy? Not through spending hordes of money and racking up burdensome debt. We find true happiness in getting to know God better and appreciating the good we already have.

It’s a lot easier on the pocketbook.

Testing the depth

“Never test the depth of water with both feet.”

The above proverb caught my attention on a reader board I saw in Spokane, Washington, this weekend.

If wondering how deep a pond is, you don’t jump in with both feet first. You keep one foot planted on the ground and test the water depth with the other until you're sure what to expect.

Earthly life is filled with “depth testing” experiences. Perhaps you’re contemplating a job change, starting a new relationship, wanting to move, preparing to make a large investment, or embarking on some other major commitment that requires you to gain more information and knowledge before you dive in without a worry. If you keep one foot firmly planted on what you know is sure and true while you test the new proposition to determine its soundness, you’ll keep yourself from drowning in more than you were prepared to handle.

God’s ever-present love and care is the rock to stay anchored to. Knowing God is giving us everything we need to live happily, healthily and abundantly, and in a timely way, keeps us from making premature and poorly thought out decisions.

Once we’re sure our desire is a God inspired idea and feel confident we can follow through with its requirements, we can jump into the new experience with both feet and rest assured we’ll stay afloat without trouble.

The perils of cloning

It’s been ten years since Dolly’s birth, the lamb that was cloned in Scotland.

Time magazine reported this week, “Dozens of animals have been cloned since that first little lamb—mice, cats, cows, pigs, horses and, most recently, a dog—and it’s becoming increasingly clear that they are all, in one way or another, defective.”

Dolly was euthanized in 2003 because of premature aging and lung disease.

Cloning does not produce exact duplicates, scientists are discovering. Somewhere in the cloning process, the genetic replication breaks down, and the end results are defective.

Do clones break down because it’s impossible to duplicate a unique creation in the first place? I wonder.

Every cat, cow, dog, horse, and person has a unique individuality. There can be no other just like it, for each reflects the unique and infinite individuality of God.

I’ve lost my fear of ever being cloned. There’s only one me, and there will be no other. Same for you, don’t you think?

Be free

July 4th is Independence Day in the United States, a time when US citizens celebrate their right to self-government and self-directed sovereignty.

There’s an even greater freedom than political and religious rights, though, that people the world over can celebrate. It’s the right to think spiritually.

No dictator, ruler or government can stop us from being spiritually minded. Whether the despot we dread takes the form of a king, a disease, a boss, a debt, a fear, or an unknown, our thinking is under our own control. We can choose to love. We can choose to think spiritually.

I heard a story once of a prisoner of war who spent an indefinite number of years in a dark cramped prison cell. To help maintain his sanity he etched the initials CT in the wall of his cell. The letters reminded him to Control Thought. He was not going to let the brainwashing tactics of his captors send his thinking into a downward spiral.

He daily prayed to stay spiritually minded and knew he could make that choice.

He knew there was one Mind over all,--the divine Mind,--and he proclaimed the one Mind to be his Mind. He understood that the one Mind was not influenced by people, places, or events in the world, and since the one Mind was his Mind, he could not be influenced by his captors, his prison environment and war circumstances either. He survived and eventually went home free with his sanity intact.

Paul wrote, “Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.”

Mary Baker Eddy responded with “Citizens of the world, accept the ‘glorious liberty of the children of God,’ and be free!”

You are a child of God. I am a child of God. We are all children of God, and as offspring of the one Father-Mother, we do not have to bow down to any mental despots. We live to serve God, the one harmonious, peaceful and healthy Mind.

Declare your independence from any mental despots and be free today! There’s no better time.