And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God.
Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You’ll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you.
Don’t copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Then you will learn to know God’s will for you, which is good and pleasing and perfect.
Verse 3 from Hymn prayer 51 – Eternal Mind the Potter is:
God’s will is done; His kingdom come; / The Potter’s work is plain. / The longing to be good and true / Has brought the light again. / And man does stand as God’s own child, / The image of His love. / Let gladness ring from every tongue, / And heaven and earth approve.
(Christian Science Hymnal, No. 51:3)
I woke up this morning with hymn 258 in my thought “Oft to every man and nation comes the moment to decide In the strife of Truth with falsehood, for the good or evil side.…” When that happens I always feel it is an angel message from God and there’s something in the hymn I’m supposed to understand/listen to.
There’s a very interesting backstory to this hymn, which I read this morning in our “Concordance to Christian Science Hymnal and Hymnal Notes”. This hymn was adapted from a poem by James Russell Lowell called “The Present Crisis”. His poem was written to protest slavery and a war (the Mexican-American one at that time – 1845). As Christian Scientists aren’t we daily fighting against the slavery of false beliefs and suggestions and told to “renounce aggression, oppression and the pride of power” (Science and Health p. 451:11)?
I thought this hymn goes well with our Bible Lesson this week on Truth and with Evan’s inspiring post today. The second stanza of the hymn says: “New occasions teach new duties, Time make ancient creeds uncouth; They must upward still and onward Who would keep abreast of Truth, And serenely down the future See the thought of men incline to the side of PERFECT JUSTICE AND TO GOD’S SUPREME DESIGN.” (“…the good, and acceptable, and perfect will of God”).
Even the melody has an interesting backstory of something I never noticed! You’ll see the hymn title line says TON-Y-BOTEL/Welsh Hymn Melody. According the the Hymnal Notes that means “tune in a bottle! The legend is that a Welsh sailor about to be ship wrecked wrote the tune down and secured it in a bottle and tossed it into the sea! Another poem was written from that “The Bottle from the Sea”) and the author’s explanation was “God is the God of ideas…” Bottom line – see how important thought is – we can “be transformed by the renewing of [our] mind!
This may be too long, but I just found out why I got this message. I reread the Notes again and almost didn’t dig in – it also says Mrs. Eddy appreciated this hymn and cited it in “Miscellaneous Writings” p. 368. The next to last paragraph there says:
“Even so Father, let the light that shineth in darkness, and the darkness comprehendeth not, dispel this illusion of the senses, open the eyes of the blind, and cause the deaf to hear.” I’m having a challenge with my hearing – so this really is an angel message. Thanks dear Evan for sending me on a exploring mission today!
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Thank you Evan for all you are doing for us. Thank you Maggie & Sharon. These are two of my favorite hymns. I continue to learn. So thankful! All have a GoOD Day!
I Love this! Thank you so much Evan. It is often said – the expression,
feeling like a stranger in a strange world. Being dragged down, as you
wrote above, by the culture that is screaming at us to follow everything
it dictates and to follow the crowd, be it with fashion, immoral behavior,
or even How we Think with crutches of materiality … (or don’t think), but
just do as others do. It is so helpful and inspiring – your message to not
be conformed to this world. As Mrs. Eddy reminds us on her chapter
on Prayer, “Christians rejoice in secret beauty and bounty, hidden from the
world, but known to God. Self-forgetfulness, purity, and affection are
constant prayers”.
Prayer that “outweighs the material world”. By Sue A. Spotts. From the November 1991 issue of The Christian Science Journal:
https://journal.christianscience.com/shared/view/6zobsl7xv4?s=copylink
P.s. Wishing RobertH and his wife a very happy 26th anniversary – enjoy your special day. And thank you for sharing your experience yesterday.
Thank you Evan and all! And Sharon, I’m a big fan of informative and inspirational comments even if they do take more than a few sentences, so thank you for sharing your inspiration about Hymn 258!
It was interesting to me to see the three different renderings of the same Greek text of Romans 12:2. Yesterday my wife came home from a neighbor’s house and reported the neighbor’s cat was missing. My wife was very distraught, so I decided to pray about it. But the first thought that occurred to me was “how will praying about it help bring back the cat?” A quiet message then came to thought that there is no separate reality from God. Everything is spiritual (idea). And because everything in Mind (God) is all harmonious, my realizing that would necessarily destroy the illusion of a lost cat. It would be like if a group of people were watching a magician make a coin disappear and one person blurted out “I see you hid the coin in your left hand!” That would reveal the truth and end the illusion for everyone. I’m not sure I’m explaining that well, but it just became so clear to me that if I knew what was true about the cat (“renewed my mind” or “change the way I thought” about this situation), it would result in my wife and our neighbor also experiencing that truth. So I spent about 5 minutes just knowing that every idea in Mind has to be in its right place because Mind is Love and Love tenderly cares for everything/everyone. That truth became so clear to me I stopped thinking about it and went back to working in the yard like I was doing before my wife informed me about the lost cat. About an hour later my wife came back outside to tell me the neighbor found the cat. I’ve been studying CS for a long time but I still find I have to remind myself about basic truths of CS. But when I do that, I find I’m able to realize “what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God.”