When reading…

When reading the Bible, I find the text more beneficial when I read for thoughts.

Reading to learn about how human beings think and act, or reading to learn history is helpful, but it’s basically inert knowledge.

Reading for thoughts however is active knowledge. It’s knowledge I can apply to my everyday life.

For example, from the modern Christian Science Bible lesson of this week, subject, independence I read in my Bible, Romans 6 and this verse stuck out:

“Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him, knowing that Christ, having been raised from the dead, dies no more.”

Humanly and historically, the reference to Christ and death brings the image of Jesus being crucified and resurrected. Knowledge that sits in my mind until I re-read and look for thoughts.

The thought of Christ is universal. We all have unity with Christ-spirit. We all can identify with the Christlike nature of compassion, mercy, truthfulness, trustworthiness. Anytime it feels as though one of those qualities has died, it will be raised and die no more because their source is God, divine Truth, the same God that created us.

Last week, I felt as though my energy was exhausted. As if it died. When I prayed, instead of praying for my energy to return, I prayed to align my thought with the thought that divine energy dies no more. My energy did return however it feels more solid because I was touched with a sense of divine energy being more substantial than human energy.

When reading the Bible, or any text, I look for thoughts, connections to the divine, rather than learning what other people did or didn’t do. What is God doing now? What has God done forever? The answers are mine, and die no more.