How Jesus loved his audience

Here is one of my favourite poems from the Christian Science periodicals. I pray with this poem when my church has a Christian Science lecture, as it did last Sunday.  

The poem is from the April 1971 issue of The Christian Science Journal:

IN THE MORNING, IN THE SUN By Doris Peel

I love that we have the privilege of knowing, as expressed in the poem, that newcomers are 

"...drawn

by someone who knew about them

what no man ever had known before."

How Jesus loved his audience.  

 Joyce Voysey   

Ed. Dear readers, we are hoping you will be able to access jsh-online to read the poem, because sadly, we can't quote it in full. There is much free content on this site, and non-subscribers can further access several articles or poems each month for free, we believe. Those who do not yet subscribe, are invited to contact their local Christian Science Reading Room librarian, who will be very happy to send you a free copy of this beautiful poem. By the way, trial subscriptions are free. 

Mrs. Eddy's poems: prayerful driving companions

The other day I was driving to the Gold Coast to attend a Christian Science lecture. It's a 90 minute drive if the traffic flowing nicely - it was! ☺ 

I didn't feel like listening to anything, and wanted to pray, so I decided to sing the hymns that have words by Mary Baker Eddy.

After a while I stopped singing and just recited the words. Slowly and thoughtfully. It was a joy and so uplifting.

Readers probably know there are 7 of Mrs. Eddy's poems set to music in our hymn books.

I grew up with them. One of my Sunday school teachers gave me a pamphlet with the those words in them. I'm not sure how old I was. (Gift idea: Hymn books make a welcome gift for those of all ages! Check out the stock in your local Christian Science Reading Room.) I soon learnt them by heart and they have come to my rescue many times. I also learnt to recognize the hymn numbers for these and other special hymns, at least those in the 1932 hymnal - I have yet to come to grips with the numbers in the "new" hymn book.

Here are the titles and introductory lines of those 7 poems:

"Christmas Morn" - Blest Christmas morn, though murky clouds / Pursue thy way

"Love" - Brood o'er us with Thy shelt'ring wing / 'Neath which our spirits blend / Like brother birds

"Satisfied" - It matters not what be thy lot / So Love doth guide

"Mother's Evening Prayer" - O gentle presence, peace and joy and power

"Christ, my Refuge" - O'er waiting harpstrings of the mind / There sweeps a strain

"Communion Hymn" - Saw ye my Saviour? Heard ye the glad sound?

"Feed my Sheep" - Shepherd, show me how to go / O'er the hillside steep

The Mary Baker Eddy Library has an excellent page about the background of these hymns. You might like to guess which hymn was written first...it's in the MBEL article.

Also on the MBE Library site is a page of research regarding the frequency of having Mrs. Eddy's poems - as hymns or solos - in church services.

What is sure is that each word and each line of these poems is a healing prayer.

Julie Swannell

Nahum on a lecture tour?

What a puzzler this book, Nahum, is to me.

I like the way the New Revised Standard Version’s sets it out as poetry.

So far I haven’t discovered how the book was shared. Did Nahum go on a Lecture Tour with it. Did he have it “published”? How?

The one angle that satisfies a little is that it is the error that God is punishing, not the people or the country.

We know from the book of Jonah that the Ninevites did reform in his time, but we are told that at a later time they went back to their old ways.

Joyce Voysey