The Christ: better than Fed Ex

by Inge Schmidt

It had been a long Thursday. There had been a paper to write, an abrasive person to deal with, and seemingly countless other small things weighing me down. But in spite of a day’s worth of consecrated prayer, I crawled into bed that night pretty sure that I had made no progress that day. Close to tears, I closed my eyes to fall asleep.

As I lay in the silence, the thought came to me: “If Fed Ex can guarantee overnight delivery, surely God can do even better.” I had to laugh out loud. The more I study Christian Science, the more I’ve gotten used to feeling the presence of God. On a regular basis, thoughts come to me that are so clearly not my own thinking, that I just know they are Love’s angel messages. But this one was stranger than usual.

I liked that it made me laugh. I love to laugh and make jokes, and that night things seemed anything but funny. The fact that this angel message immediately sent me from self-pity to laughing out loud showed me that God knew exactly what I needed. I felt cared for, protected, and most of all, like I wasn’t alone anymore. That comfort alone would have been enough for me. But the more I thought about it, I started to understand God, the Christ, and Christian Science in a new way.

For example, I began to think about God’s love as a precious package, addressed directly to each one of us. I remembered a line from Mary Baker Eddy’s Communion Hymn:

Strongest deliverer, friend of the friendless; Life of all being divine: Thou the Christ, and not the creed; Thou the Truth in thought and deed… (Christian Science Hymnal, No. 298).

I realized that it was the Christ that delivered God’s love—that brought those sweet messages to my thought—just as gently as this humorous idea had startled my thought a few minutes earlier.

The Christ was the divine Fed Ex truck—the consciousness filled with right, loving ideas about and for each one of us. It was that Christ message of good, delivered right to human consciousness which replaced fear, doubt, anxiety, and unhappiness. But I also remembered that you have to claim—and sometimes even sign for—your Fed Ex packages. In the same way, the Christ is always delivering God’s angel packages. The question is: are we expecting those packages? Do we run to the front door as soon as the metaphorical doorbell rings, to retrieve our gift with the same enthusiasm of the Christmas season? Do we realize our own worth and supply, readily claim those packages as our own and sign on the dotted line?

In Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, Mary Baker Eddy writes, “God expresses in man the infinite idea forever developing itself, broadening and rising higher and higher from a boundless basis.” The more I thought about the Christ as God’s moment by moment delivery of Love, I realized that God was not only expressing (showing, revealing, making manifest) the infinite idea in man, but God was expressing (sending by special messenger or rapid transport) the infinite idea in man—and that included me. We don’t have to wait for that delivery of divine Love. It is constant, infinite, and always expedient.

As I re-closed my eyes to go to sleep, I realized the abundance of divine packages of Love I had received that day. They weren’t in envelopes or boxes, but they were there. I’d received a simple smile, a calming comment from a friend, an article in a Sentinel. My worry and anxiety vanished. The problems of the day no longer felt burdensome and heavy. I woke up the next morning with an abiding sense of peace, expecting to see the express and immediate nature of God’s Love.

This entry was posted on Friday, May 2nd, 2008 at 4:58 pm and is filed under Inspiration, Anxiety. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response.