Dear Fellow Pray-ers   What an urgent and clear opportunity we all have to be praying for our world at the moment. When we think about it “self isolation” is a specific demand to renew our commitment to that same demand Christ Jesus asked of his followers, – to be in “self isolation” when he told us:  “Pray without ceasing.”   And he told us how to do this: “When thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and, when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father, which seeth in secret, shall reward thee openly.”(SH 14:31)   Our Leader, Mary Baker Eddy expands on this “self isolation” in the Textbook, when she writes: “When thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and, when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father, which seeth in secret, shall reward thee openly.”   … The closet typifies the sanctuary of Spirit, the door of which shuts out sinful sense but lets in Truth, Life, and Love. Closed to error, it is open to Truth, and vice versa. The Father in secret is unseen to the physical senses, but He knows all things & rewards according to motives, not according to speech. To enter into the heart of prayer, the door of the erring senses must be closed. Lips must be mute and materialism silent, that man may have audience with Spirit, the divine Principle, Love, which destroys all error.   In order to pray aright, we must enter into the closet and shut the door. We must close the lips and silence the material senses. In the quiet sanctuary of earnest longings, we must deny sin and plead God’s allness. We must resolve to take up the cross, and go forth with honest hearts to work and watch for wisdom, Truth, and Love. We must “pray without ceasing.” Such prayer is answered, in so far as we put our desires into practice.  (SH 14:31; 15:3–22 The) There are 10 “musts” here, so strong demands!   Don’t you love it when she tells us that we must have “audience with Spirit.?!”  Audio means to hear or listen, so in this closet of prayer, we do not talk to God; rather we listen and hear what God is saying about His own loved, beautiful, untouched creation.

This week’s lesson also gives us such comforting assurance of God’s power and presence, and we hear God saying to each of His loved ideas: ”Be not afraid nor dismayed by reason of this great multitude (of lies and fake news constantly presented to us); for the battle is not yours, but God’s.  Ye shall not need to fight in this battle, set yourselves, stand ye still, and see the salvation of the Lord with you….”   What clear instructions: 1. SET YOURSELF -establish your own peace and fearlessness in the quiet of the closet. 2.  “STAND STILL (Be still and know God’s power and ever presence.) And then 3. “SEE THE SALVATION of the Lord with you.   SET YOURSELF, STAND STILL, & SEE SALVATION   And let’s be clear in dealing with the subject of “social distancing, or being so many yards away from someone else and certainly not touching them, – in this week’s lesson we have Jesus’ parable of the tares and the wheat, and from this parable we learn that man, God’s idea, the expression of God’s perfection is always an UNTOUCHABLE.  The textbook tells us:   “The temporal and unreal NEVER TOUCH the eternal and real.  The mutable and imperfect NEVER TOUCH the immutable and perfect. The inharmonious and self-destructive NEVER TOUCH the harmonious and self-existent.” (SH 300:13)   Here we are told 3 times that man is an “untouchable” by anything that is temporal and unreal, mutable and imperfect, inharmonious or self-destructive:  Why?  Because man is eternal and real, immutable and perfect, harmonious and self-existent in God. And our separation from nothing claiming to be something, our separation from anything “tare like” takes place “through the realization of God as ever present and of man as reflecting the divine likeness.”    So we can rejoice that we are “untouchable” – now and forever, wherever we are.   And the final citation in this week’s lesson has the ultimate and final statement on this current world fairy tale:   “Entirely separate from the belief and dream of material living, is the Life divine, revealing spiritual understanding and the consciousness of man’s dominion over the whole earth.”  SH 14:25   So, dear friends… Rejoice in your closet having “audience with Spirit:” Joy in “setting yourself in untroubled peace; Joy in standing still in fearless being; Joy in “seeing the salvation of God, and Rejoice that you are untouchable, “entirely separate from the belief and dream of material living”,  because your Life is divine –and acknowledging that this is the unchanging fact of every individual on this planet.   With such tender love   Jill