Beauty and the bugs
A thing of beauty is a joy for ever," wrote the poet John Keats. But what is one to do when he seems unable to preserve a thing of beauty or even to bring it to full development?
Here is what two people did. They had carefully nurtured some rosebushes one spring in anticipation of the blooms the bushes would bear during the summer. But when summer came, the bugs came with it! Hundreds of tiny rose aphids covered the rosebushes -- stem, leafM and bud.
The people didn't want to use a spray because they feared the ill effects it might have on the birds that came to the yard. But neither did they want their carefully tended rosebushes to be sapped of strength by the invading host. So they decided instead to apply the teachings of Christian Science. They knew these teaching could bring harmony when understood and lived faithfully.
They realized that they must gain a true concept of God's creation -- not a creation in which one form of life preys upon another, but one in which all forms of life menifest to each other the blessings of God. There can be no destructive element in true creation, they realized, for destruction and creation are opposites.
The people recalled the words of Mary Baker Eddy n1 in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures:m "The only intelligence or substance of a thought, a seed, or a flower is God, the creator of it." n2 Therefore the true substance of these things cannot be destroyed, for it expresses the nature of the indestructible creator, God. Furthermore, whatever would attempt to destroy something else is opposed to God, the creative Principle of being.
n1 Mrs. Eddy is the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science;
n2 Science and Health,m p. 508;
"Bugs can't bite beauty," one of the people reasoned. "Animality can't touch spirituality. In its true sense, a rose is an expression of beauty, which is actually a spiritual quality and therefor not subject to material conditions." Reasoning from the standpoint that God governs all the varied objects of His creation, the pair gained a higher concept of the indestructible beauty the roses and all God's ideas express. In this way they obtained peace.
One day shortly afterward they noticed that the aphids had completely disappeared, and that the rosebushes were in their usual vigorous condition. That summer thy had the loveliest roses they had ever grown.
Now, not everyone may want to work out a problem of destructive garden pests in the same way, nor need he do so. But the fact remains that an application of the truths of Christian Science can bring help to those who are confronted by difficult circumstances, as it did in this experience fo the rose lovers. One need never think that his particular problem is beyond God's power to solve.
Christ Jesus did not consider conditions of nature, however unpleasant, to be outside the jurisdiction of devine power. When the agry sea was tumultuous, he quieted it; when he chose to walk upon it, he did so. When he wished to cross it immediatelly, he did that too. So-called natural causes were not natural to him unless they expressed the nature of God, infinite good, the only cause.
Through a true sense of God's harmonious and beautiful creation we can prove our dominion over a false sense of undesirable, unlovable creatures. God has not withdrawn that which He conferred upon man in creating him, as related in this verse from Genesis: "God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth." n3
n3 Genesis 1:26.
DAILY BIBLE VERSE If there be in the land famine, if there be pestilence, blasting, mildew, locust , or if there be caterpillar; . . . what prayer and supplication soever be made by any man, . . . then hear thou in heaven thy dwelling place, and forgive, and do, . . . that they may fear thee all the days that they live in the land whi ch thou gavest unto our fathers. I Kings 8:37 -40