The possibilities of man

"Life is senseless, I have such a hard time even getting up in the morning. What is the point? What am I anyway?" Someone burdened her heart on me the other day - and I heard similar comments over the last week. Who are we to endure so many hardships every day?

I thought about the hardships that Christ Jesus encountered, about the toil, senseless violence, political unpredictability, he and his disciples and contemporaries had to deal with day after day. I thought about a group of refugees from Afghanistan we hosted recently and their heartbreaking stories - how they were saved by a fabulous organisation, how the German airforce landed the planes despite the explosion at the airport in Kabul in August 2021, how their families who sent them forward and whom they had to leave behind are hoping every day to see another sunrise the next morning.

That the world is a hard place is heartrending and unfortunately not new. I realised that then and now it is not a different world we need but a different view.

I was reminded of a stroll and a realisation I have never forgotten: I felt surrounded be a variety of settings in which nothing seemed to move: A family member being ill for several months without any improvement, a difficult meeting ahead for which I expected “the same old story”, a complicated question for which I had no answer. While I walked I was realising that the problem settings had something in common: A blockage, a downward pull towards deterioration or conflict. The settings involved people, and I was pondering the question, what man is, what everyone truly is. Only God knows who we are. And then an intriguing thought came to me: „Man is the sum of the possible.“

I captured this thought, remembering a definition of man from Science and Health with Keys to the Scriptures. Mary Baker Eddy writes: "MAN. The  compound idea of infinite Spirit; the spiritual image and likeness of God; the full representation of Mind." [Science and Health, p. 591] I pondered this wide outlook on the nature of man, moving way beyond a material perception of states and things. I caught something of the infinite and eternal nature of being and I realised that the qualities of man are spiritual and promising by their very nature. A wealth of goodness, a richness of possibilities – each quality of man being a promise, not static, moving out from man's spiritual identity, which is defining the potential of each one of us. In whatever circumstances. Good is always winning even if this seems to be the very thing that is most unlikely. But in all the history of the world error could never push Truth aside or alter the course of God's plan.

The areas I was worried about, changed for the better in the following days. The health of the family member improved, the meeting went surprisingly well and the answer to my dilemma unfolded. I continue to pray for our new friends from Afghanistan every day and I do so with a fresh view of the possibilities that God has in store for all of us. God's world is "a world more bright", as Mary Baker Eddy writes in her poem "Christ, my refuge." (from the Christian Science Hymnal, # 550)

"Man is the sum of the possible". We all are in for surprises. Prophesying what might happen does not make it so. Everyone reflects the fullness of being. This spiritual truth is based on eternal Truth. It disposes of inharmony and shows that there is no weight nor tenacity in material sense. Error cannot cling to man. Man is everything that God expresses in us. Everything is possible. Isn't this a brighter outlook?