Words that stay with me

My goodness, I think I have a metaphor!  My husband and I go to Tallebudgera Creek most mornings for what I call a swim.  I swim with the current for a set distance and then I walk back against the current to start another ‘lap’.  At the flood tide, the current gives a delightfully swift swim, but to walk against it is almost impossible; sometimes I even give up and walk back on the beach.

Metaphor, you ask? I ask: or is it a simile?

met·a·phor  noun \ˈme-tə-ˌfȯr also -fər\

: a word or phrase for one thing that is used to refer to another thing in order to show or suggest that they are similar

: an object, activity, or idea that is used as a symbol of something else

sim·i·le  noun \ˈsi-mə-(ˌ)lē\

grammar : a phrase that uses the words like or as to describe someone or something by comparing it with someone or something else that is similar

I shall be pleased to have a verdict on that one.

On page 11 of Unity of Good, Mrs. Eddy speaks of the currents of matter, or mortal mind.  “Jesus taught us to walk over, not into or with, the currents of matter, or mortal mind.”

I know how hard it is to walk against the creek’s current and what a force it is, so it gives me a small idea of how strong the currents of mortal mind are, or rather, claim to be.  We must walk over them. 

How are we to do that?  Mrs. Eddy goes on to tell us how Jesus did that in the following lines, e.g. “He annulled the laws of matter...” (page 11).

One is reminded of Adam Dickey’s article titled “God’s Law of Adjustment.”  He tells us there is a law of God that can cope with any so-called law of mortal mind.

I am also reminded of a personal experience.  My husband and I were travelling to Perth in a campervan (car and caravan combo).  We had left Cobar without filling up on petrol.  It is a long way to the next town on the Barrier Highway – Wilcannia (260km/2 1/2 hours according to Internet) – so we were quite apprehensive about getting there on that amount of petrol, staying the night, and getting an early start the next morning. It was night by the time we got near to Wilcannia.  The caravan park was on the Darling River (magnificent river gums), a little distance before the town.  We headed directly into the town to get petrol.  The town was completely dark.  We found a petrol station and were told by an attendant that the town’s electricity supply was down; that we couldn’t get petrol.  Now we had been to this town before on trips to Perth and there seemed to be a darkness about the atmosphere, so my thought was, “typical of Wilcannia!” 

I was in the back of the campervan peeling potatoes to save time when we camped.  The thought came, “Let there be light!”  Immediately the electricity came on and the pumps were back in use.

Now, for a long time I had thought of this as my asking God to put the light back on, and Him doing it.  Finally, the penny dropped and I realised that it was the other way around.  God was telling me to “let there be light” in my thinking about the people and circumstances of that town. 

I find that as I read this book, individual words stay with me after I have turned over (the page) from them, and I feel the need to go back and take in more of their pertinence.  This morning the word is “permanent.”  Yesterday it was “Principle.”

It’s so satisfying and comforting that God knows nothing that is not permanent.  “If God knows that which is not permanent, it follows that He knows something which He must learn to unknow, for the benefit of our race” (page 13).

And when I read that “God is their divine Principle,” (that is the divine Principle of the universe and man) I had such a wonderful sense of the solidness and invincibility of God and His creation, man and the universe; a stillness and a great sense of calm and well-being.  Principle, the solid bedrock of existence.

Actually, there was another passage on page 10 – “He is not the blind force of a material universe.”  What a way to describe the supposed force of a material universe!

Joyce Voysey