Daily Watch for the week of January 14th, – January 21st, 2024

From 500 Watching Points by Gilbert Carpenter

392 — WATCH that you rise to meet the claim of advancing age with alertness and activity. Sometimes it helps to call it witchcraft, since that is what it is. Mrs. Eddy once analyzed its workings as follows: “Malicious animal magnetism haunts you with a personality all distorted by mortal suggestions; makes it hideous and hateful to you and urges you to adopt ‘this’ as being created by God. It suggests a mental picture of age, failing strength, failing memory, dim sight, dim hearing, withered skin, bent form and every other suggestion to bolster up the lie of age.”

In the Christian Science Series for May 1, 1889, we find Mrs. Eddy writing, “The added wisdom of age and experience is strength, not weakness, and we should understand this, expect it and know that it is so, then it would appear.”

You will be amazed and delighted by the revitalizing effects of this confident attitude, your step will have the spring of youth in it, and the dread of old age will slink away out of sight.

Another thing to guard against is mental and physical inertia, particularly the former; when your interests begin to narrow down to what principally concerns yourself, look out; this is one of the first signs of old age. By living on a diet of self, you will slowly but surely deteriorate into a dried up, uninteresting character, neglected and really unworthy of anything but charitable notice.

Disinclination to go out among people finally produces physical disability to do so. Limbs stiffen and your body refuses to do your will without the suffering you dislike to impose upon it. All routine tends to produce atrophy of mental activities, and again has habit robbed you of your youthfulness. Instead of dreading changes and fighting off the opportunities for making them, welcome them eagerly as you would a glass of water to quench your thirst — they are youth preservers for you. But don’t make the mistake of holding fast to that youth which belonged to your twenties. The charm and poise of your assimilated experiences have far greater value as an asset for your attractiveness than anything of the distant past. You are fitted to meet the world from any source whatever, if you have lived and lived deeply.

A sense of humor is a divine gift. It is the very stronghold of abiding youth. It slays care, sustains hope, and has the world with it from the start to the finish. If it is not yours by right of heart, then cultivate it as a fine art. It is too valuable to be ignored.

And don’t look on life from any viewpoint with a protest. Cultivate a love for people — exclusive of yourself — and let it be that divine love that sends out joy to everyone and so happiness to self.

The handling of the claim of age would be approached with expectancy, did the student realize that it is but a false argument, since faculties and functions directed and sustained by Mind, can no more wear out or become impaired, than can a mirror wear out by being used. A wholesome active determination to meet these lies of age cannot help but be efficacious.

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.