Daily Watch for the week of January 12th, 2025 — January 19th, 2025
93 — WATCH lest your anticipation of future good tend to nullify your present effort. The successful in this world are not those who waste time in the present by looking forward perhaps to receiving an inheritance, when some rich relative dies. One should face the fact that he will have in the future exactly what he works for now.
This same proposition should be held as true in the mental realm. The metaphysician’s effort is to level the valleys of regret in the past, and the mountains of anticipation, so that his work is seen to lie wholly in the eternal now.
Christian Science exposes the error of future anticipation, showing that time fulfills none of its promises to bring blessings. Mrs. Eddy calls time a mortal divisor, and declares that we must take advantage of time, not let time take advantage of us. We should make use of it in the sense that it will be the alchemy that turns present right effort into right results.
False theology is based on an exaltation of the future that belittles the present moment, teaching that man’s joys lie in some future state called heaven. Believing this, mortal man resembles a donkey with a wisp of hay tied on the end of a stick in front of his nose. No matter how much he may go ahead, he can never reach the hay.
Future expectation has been defined as the scourge of mortal life, and there is a danger of bringing this curse into Christian Science. It is a curse because it tricks one into placing his blessings where he cannot reach them. No man can manifest or experience heaven so long as he considers that it lies in the future. Behold, now is the accepted time. Behold, now is the time to realize that tomorrow holds nothing that cannot be found in today. Let us accept as a present reality the blessings which now belong to man as a gift of God, blessings which mortal mind can only anticipate, and hence, never attain.
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from Watches, Prayers, and Arguments, as given by Mary Baker Eddy, page 49
“Hear, O Israel, for the Lord, our God, is one God.”
You are not to come in your own name to pray.
You are not to control any mind.
You are to come only in the divine strength, and know that God will rule and does, and that hypnotism and evil minds cannot, and do not, control men or governments.
All power is God, good.
This is my only formula to Christian Scientists for prayer, and God will give you faith that will remove mountains.