Feeling Pressure from Church Work Healed

I’m very grateful to this Church and to our holy practitioners. Everyone here is incredibly supportive – if you love God, you’re welcome to come and learn; if you love God, you’re also welcome to offer your time to church work. And as dear Jeremy once expressed to me one day, we are all on God’s team here; everyone is cheering for you! Over the years since I found this church, I have sometimes struggled with balancing my Church work and keeping it up to date, while also managing my paid job and everything else in life. I even had a time a few years back when I was very busy with work and Church work, and I started to feel upset. I began to wonder why I was doing all this work, why I was staying up late, and pushing to get Church work finished.

I am far from proud of this next part – but I started to feel cross at my dear Plainfield practitioner. Do you know what God told me in my thoughts when I felt cross and erroneously blamed my practitioner because I erroneously thought she was making me do Church work? God said to me, “You will not–you must not think this for she is praying for you!” With that, I felt such power encircling our dear Church and the words from a favourite hymn by Mary Baker Eddy came to thought, “the arrow that doth wound the dove darts not from those who watch and love.” Well, I don’t mind saying that I sobbed mightily when those words came to thought! So, I immediately messaged my practitioner and told her what I had been thinking and the rebuke I had heard from God in protection of her. And I apologised profusely. She was very loving and kind and immediately forgave me – even had a bit of a laugh – and she thanked me for telling her. Isn’t that just the most humbling thing?! She thanked me for telling her that I had been cross and had been rebuked by God for it. In the years since that time, it has been revealed to me clearer and clearer that it is God who called me to do His work at this Church – and it is God that I am answerable to if I don’t do it.

At first, this call to work for God at this Church felt both sublime and a burden. Still, so many times the blessing of doing God’s work at this Church has left me with the conviction that Church work is the safest, purest, most blessed thing that I could ever be honoured to do! It protects my thought and forces me, reminds me, bids me to turn to God for everything! Working for God at this church is hard work; sometimes it can feel like a burden or tiring, or any of the many mortal mind negative dialogue that assail thought. But working for God at this Church – it gives me a vital purpose in life – it reigns down Love upon my world – makes sense of a non-sensical material existence, and rather than a burden – it blesses me, it uplifts me, and holds me so close that the world’s stings cannot harm me. So, thank you to my planfield practitioner for providing a sublime example for me to follow and for faithfully teaching me and showing me how to proceed. Thank you to the Plainfield Christian Science Church Independent for teaching us all.