Be Thou Removed

Recently, while reading the Bible, I came to Mark 11:22-24 where Christ Jesus is saying to his disciples, “Have faith in God. For verily I say unto you, That whosoever shall say unto this mountain, Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea; and shall not doubt in his heart, but shall believe that those things which he saith shall come to pass; he shall have whatsoever he saith. Therefore I say unto you, What things soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them.”

I can remember hearing that verse as a child, and I would imagine this great big mountain was going to fall into the sea. I thought that was so wonderful, that the Christ, Truth could enable this. I am sure that if it were ever necessary, He could enable that. Later I learned in this church that mountains really refer to problems, and when we build a problem up in our mind it seems to gain the huge proportion of a mountain. Perhaps you may have a physical problem, and, if you think about it a lot, suddenly it seems to be a mountainous problem. Or maybe it is a financial crisis. Maybe you are worried about a child or a loved one. Here, the Christ, Truth is telling us that when we command this problem, this mountain, to go into the sea, it will. It will dissolve itself.

This meant so much to me to realize this, and also, the fact that we need to have the faith that we can do this. It is possible because all things are possible to God. These few verses also remind me of Mrs. Eddy’s pages in Science and Health, which we call the “command statements,” pages 390-393. In those pages she says things like, “…dispute the testimony of the material senses…”; “Suffer no claim of sin or of sickness to grow upon the thought”; “Rise in the conscious strength of the spirit of Truth to overthrow the plea of mortal mind”; “Banish the belief that you can possibly entertain a single intruding pain which cannot be ruled out by the might of Mind”; “Mentally contradict every complaint from the body”; and it goes on. The point being that when you have a problem you have got to command it! You have to speak with the authority of Christ, even though it looms up as big as a mountain. With the power and the might of God, it can be dissolved into its “native nothingness.” We are the ones who build the problem up in our mind and give it reality, but God never said it, so we don’t have to have it! I am so grateful for the teachings we receive in Christian Science that gives us, as God said, dominion over “all things.”