Monthly Inspiration

From the booklet Peace for Today, Inc.: “Peace for Today”

“Truly happy people are those who have found someone or some cause to love and belong to.”

Truth Gems

From Realization through Concentrated Attention by Clara T. Stocker

Please take time to think about this month’s truth gem.

Use it as your morning affirmation or just before going to sleep. Cut it out and paste it to a mirror or some place where you will see it often.

“There is no thought of criticism in my heart toward anyone.” 

Silent Servers

Date: Every Tuesday 9:30 a.m.

Location: Minister's Office

This Prayer Group meets to pray for the healing of all conditions requested by those who seek help.

Silent Servers confidentially pray for requests in Our Prayer Box for one month with extensions upon request.

Requesters are encouraged to be responsible for their own well being by attending the group or joining us in prayer wherever they are during this half hour between 9:30 and 10:00 am.

The Prayer Request box is also prayed over at Sunday Services, as well as during the Prayer Circle.

All are welcome to make prayer requests.  Call the church office or mail requests if unable to use the green Prayer Request Cards, located in the Church foyer.  Prayer works!

Thinking About Scripture

Mary Ann McAfee,
Minister in Training
 

The following metaphysical interpretation of the Bible is offered for your consideration.  This column is based on Charles Fillmore’s The Metaphysical Bible Dictionary and The Revealing Word, and it also uses the Lamsa translation of the Bible.  Your interpretation may differ.

A SPECIAL INVITATION:  Interpreting scripture makes it come alive, here and now.  You find that the same passage speaks to each person differently.  There are messages especially for you, sometimes simple, sometimes profound.  Our class in metaphysical interpretation of the Old Testament begins on Thursday, March 6 at 7:00 PM.  Come and re-discover this remarkable book in a whole new way.  Everyone is welcome to attend!

The following metaphysical interpretation is offered for your consideration.  This column is based on Charles Fillmore's Metaphysical Bible Dictionary and Revealing Word, and it uses the Lamsa translation of the Bible.  Your interpretation may differ. 

This month's passage is part of the famous story about Moses parting the Red Sea.  "And the waters returned, and covered the chariots and the horsemen and all the host of Pharaoh that came into the sea after them; there remained not a single one of them.  But the children of Israel walked through the sea as if they were walking on the dry land; and the waters were like a wall to them on their right hand and on their left."  (Exodus 14:28-29)

Definitions. Red Sea: A fixed sea of universal thought that has become part of the very world in which we live.  It's the race belief in life separate from God.  It represents the sum of all thoughts about life with which the human race has impregnated the universal ether.  Pharaoh: Pharaoh means the sun.  It is the ruler of the solar plexus, the sun center in the subconscious mind.  This is obscurity, or Egypt, to the conscious mind.  Pharaoh also signifies the whole body consciousness; it rules the body under the material regime.  Pharaoh as the ruler of Egypt means that he rules in obscurity. 

Moses and Pharaoh represent two forces at work in the consciousness—especially that part pertaining to the body.  Moses represents the evolutionary force of new ideas that have grown in the subconscious mind, that are tugging at old limitations and material ignorance, and trying to rise into the higher life expression.  Israel: Spiritual consciousness.  Israelites: The illumined thoughts in consciousness; the total of our religious thoughts.  The Israelites in slavery represent thoughts that once had the illumination of Spirit, but that have gone down into, and have become obscured by, matter and material conditions.  Egypt: The realm of substance and life in the depths of the body consciousness.  The darkness of ignorance.

Egypt often symbolizes the subconscious mind.  Chariots: The body activities.  Horses: A symbol in its higher aspect of the intellect or intelligence, and in its lower aspect, of the lower mind subject to the desires and passions.   Horses signify either true or false understanding. (G.A. Gaskell, Dictionary of All Scriptures and Myths.)  Dry land: A symbol of the lower planes of the soul, or "material man." (G.A. Gaskell, Dictionary of All Scriptures and Myths.)  Moses: Drawing out; extracting (from the water).  Moses symbolizes the progressive process of evolutionary law.

Interpretation:  The children of Israel represent our spiritual thoughts evolving away from a material belief system, toward "heaven on earth."  The Red Sea represents all of the human race's beliefs about life.  The common human belief that life is separate from God makes up a great part of this sea of race consciousness.

In dealing with our own minds first, we are able to overcome the material beliefs, but then we are faced with a barrier seemingly impossible to overcome – the strong belief of the human race that we are separate from God.  What a discouraging situation it is to see clearly that your spiritual path is considered by most of the world to be a silly waste of time, destined to go nowhere.

Meanwhile, material concerns threaten to overtake you.  "Pharaoh's host" is catching up.  They are the thoughts pertaining to the physical body, and also to the body of your affairs; they are worries that always seem to demand your time and energy; they enslaved you before and might do so again.  They are thoughts about your financial future, worry about your health, concerns with insurance, gym memberships, prestige, name brands.

With the sea in front of you and the powerful horses and chariots behind you, you almost wish you had never attempted to become free.  I can almost hear the turbulent Red Sea full of negative, "You'll never make it" comments.

The intent of the Israelites was clear.  They marched to the very edge of the sea.  Just so, the principle of spiritual evolution compels us to go as far as our illumined thoughts can take us.  It seems we have reached a place where no further progress can be made.  But appearances are deceiving; the I AM consciousness makes the forbidding sea as easy to cross as a mirage.  We continue to evolve, walking right through all false beliefs, proving that they have no power to stop the procession of Truth.
 

Like attracts like.  The sea of false beliefs engulfs the lower material thoughts, but has no effect on illumined thoughts.  I think this story teaches us to take each phase of our spiritual journey as it comes.  Don't look too far ahead, and never believe that the light can be extinguished by the dark.