Finish the Course Unswervingly

How easy it is to abandon an unfinished job! Strong resolve is required to complete an important project. How often we are enticed by restlessness, discouragement, downright laziness, or the attractiveness of some other venture, to get off our course, or desert the work we have started.

People often incur the risk of failure by switching from one job to another, and never finishing anything. They lose interest in what they are doing. They yield to the temptation to start something new. No one is immune to the subtle suggestion to quit or change course, whether planting a field, writing an article, overcoming temperament, treating the sick, practicing law, or engineering, carrying on a political, or military campaign. But happily, through God’s help we can silence the distracting suggestions, and continue on our way to success.

The tendency to shift or let down often holds back the full recovery of the sick. The patient accepts Christian Science treatment until partly relieved, then prematurely dispenses with the services of the practitioner, saying, “I can do my own work now.” Every practitioner is familiar with these situations. A vacillating course invites defeat.

“Only through radical reliance on Truth can scientific healing power be realized.” (S&H) It’s essential to persevere faithfully in declaring the Truth, and denying the error, until every trace of the problem is healed. A complete healing should be had, without delay. To demonstrate this, nothing should be left undone.

An experienced practitioner knows the importance of thoroughly healing the problem. He may sometimes take the precaution of working on for a time after it has been alleviated, in order to forestall a recurrence of the belief. This work consists in realizing that there is nothing to return or recur, no possibility of relapse, since the problem never was true. We gather great reassurance from Science and Health: “It is well to be calm in sickness; to be hopeful is still better; but to understand that sickness is not real and that Truth can destroy its seeming reality, is best of all, for this understanding is the universal and perfect remedy.”

We can’t swerve from healing unpleasant traits of disposition and habit. They must intelligently, and consistently, be handled. They hold no terrors for those who have resolved, through God’s help, to heal them, but we shouldn’t slow down our efforts when these weaknesses are only partly corrected. They must be destroyed. “Rise in the strength of Spirit to resist all that is unlike good. God has made man capable of this, and nothing can vitiate the ability and power divinely bestowed on man.” (S&H)

God is at hand to direct and sustain us; to vitalize and strengthen us. We can finish our course unswervingly.

Now is the time to pray without ceasing. There can be no relaxing of our mental, moral, and spiritual work. God’s law is invoked in our behalf. Every righteous man can count on His constant care and support. “For the eyes of the Lord are over the righteous, and his ears are open unto their prayers: but the face of the Lord is against them that do evil. And who is he that will harm you, if ye be followers of that which is good?” God is so near and so kind. We can thankfully acknowledge that God directs and sustains our lives, and that confusion can find no place in our experience. We can gratefully declare that the Lord of hosts is with us night and day.