“Suns and planets teach grand lessons.” (SH, 240.)
Joshua commanded the sun to stand still in order that he might continue fighting the Amorites (Joshua 10:11-12); the sun did so, and great victory was achieved. For success in spiritual warfare, one of the principle requirements is: stillness.
“Stand still, and see the salvation of the Lord.”
“Be still, and know that I AM God.”
This stillness means that I am to remain in the presence of God, to stand on His word without wavering, without giving way to what the so-called physical senses may or may not be telling me.
Christian Science teaches that the sun is not what it appears to be, a material ball of hydrogen atoms, but that it represents God, or Soul, outside the body. Therefore, “Be still, and know that I am God” means to be absent from the body and present with Soul outside the body.
God is Light. God, as Soul, abides forever, unchanging and unchangeable. When I am present with Soul, I cannot help but to reflect Soul’s eternal stillness, stability: the absolute, undeviating, unswerving unshakableness of the Light of Soul that annihilates everything unlike itself. When I am immovably present with Soul, I cannot help but to dispel darkness.
In commanding the sun to be still, Joshua commanded his consciousness of God’s Light to be still, to remain fixed upon the triumphant majesty and grandeur of the goodness of God that overcomes all thing opposed to it, and thus he became one with the Light, routing the Amorites: “As they fled before Israel…the LORD cast down on them large hailstones from the sky, and more of them were killed by the hailstones than by the swords of the Israelites.” Such is the power of stillness that allows the unflickering light of God to shine on any problem I may face, hastening its solution!