Watching Point 409

409 — WATCH that you do not pray to God to come down into Egypt to extricate you from its clutches. A chicken cannot pray for the mother hen to come into the egg to help it to hatch. The mother tenderly watches over it, while it performs its simple part, to peck open the thin shell. God provides us with the ability to reduce so-called intelligent matter to husks, so that we may turn away from it and start on our journey to His house, which is really everpresent Mind. Prayer is our effort to turn away from matter and to draw nigh to Him; then the promise is that He will draw nigh to us.

Man’s part is to rise from the objective to the subjective, from the belief of intelligent matter, to the consciousness of Mind as supreme and All; while God’s part is to destroy the false evidence of sin, sickness and death. God says, “My child, if you do your part in rising above matter as having any life, truth, intelligence or substance, I will reward you by taking away all erroneous manifestation.”

Mrs. Eddy once wrote to a student, “Do you find any difficulty in healing? If so, strike for the higher sense of the nothingness of matter.” Also in her first rendering of the spiritual interpretation of the Lord’s Prayer she wrote, “And Truth will destroy sickness, sin and death, as it destroys the belief in intelligent matter.”

You must not believe that the part you have to play is material, which if you do faithfully, God will do the spiritual. It is better to say that God will take care of the material, if you are faithful in doing the spiritual. See Science and Health, 395:6.