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For those new to my blog, since December I have been taking a quality of Spirit every month and focusing on it in an attempt to understand and demonstrate it better. Then I have been reporting here what I learned. As this month was full of busy closure, I focused on the fact that Spirit itself is complete, and also that all Spirit does is complete.
By its very nature of being infinite ever presence and all-power, Spirit expresses completeness. Mary Baker Eddy says in her groundbreaking book Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, “Principle is not found in fragmentary ideas.” Principle, like Spirit, is another name for God. She also says, “the ideas of God in universal being are complete and forever expressed.” So as God is complete, we as His expression or ideas, are complete as well. Mrs Eddy goes on to say, “Man is God’s reflection, needing no cultivation, but ever beautiful and complete.”
Sometimes it sure can seem like we are chasing fragments and herding them together like puzzle pieces into some semblance of order. Sometimes I feel like I need a lot of “cultivation” to express either my beauty or my completeness. But in reality, God expresses in all of us every single good quality and attribute in perfect abundance and coordination, without lapse or vagueness. Because this is true, I can claim to be complete, even when I don’t see it fully yet.
And as God is complete, so is His work. After the first chapter in Genesis in the Bible, where God made everything “very good,” it declares, “Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them.” (Gen 2:1) Since man is God’s image and likeness as it says in Genesis (or God’s “reflection” referred to in the above quote) we can know and claim by extrapolation that our work is “finished” too.
I have found these thoughts very helpful lately, when in a series of projects I felt lost, almost drowning, in a sea of details. These thoughts were like a life raft for me, and on them I floated to the shore, where– once I’d gotten my land legs back– I realized I had arrived at that so-often-obscure place called “completion.”
After transferring 2,300 blog posts from the old blog to this updated site, along with the myriad minutia involved in designing a new website, it finally was launched. After nearly two decades of homeschooling three children all the way through high school– oh my gosh!– our youngest child has graduated. And even when these victories seemed doubtful or impossible because they were such a rigorous climb, I got there by doing in each moment what was complete and nearest right, like each moment was a microcosm of the desired whole which was already established by God.
I am celebrating the successful completion of these daunting projects, and very grateful for the fruits and the lessons they bring. Meanwhile, I am reminded that even though both we and our projects are already in reality complete, progress is an essential aspect of God’s law. As Eddy puts it, “God expresses in man the infinite idea forever developing itself, broadening and rising higher and higher from a boundless basis.”
In a larger way, we are always demonstrating more and more of our own infinite completeness as eternal Life unfolds indefinitely. Wow. That is a profound thing to ponder. And finishing something need never be bittersweet, because the amazing adventure of Life forever continues.
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4 Comments
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What a profound, simple and peaceful counterfact to the suggestions we have of being overwhelmed with unfinished projects. It is so much easier than plowing through all the ebooks I continually download to help me with my chores. Many thanks for these ideas.
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Author
Glad you found it helpful!
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I am just now reading this (Oct 9) on a day like many others that is filled with projects looming, half completed. It is true that I often feel incomplete as a reflection of the “fragment-chasing” part of my life. Thanks for kind wisdom, putting some of that into perspective. Everything arrives in its perfect time~I needed this today!
Brenda
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Author
xxx!
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