After almost any tragedy, especially large-scale ones, people comment on how individuals come together and contribute to help those affected. The founders of myGoodDeed.org mean to take that one step further, encouraging people to do good deeds for others on the anniversary of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in New York.

"We need to rekindle the way we came together in the spirit of 9/11," David Paine, cofounder of myGoodDeed.org, told The Christian Science Monitor.

And people are committing themselves to good deeds. For instance, 100 volunteers from New York will travel to Texas to rebuild a house destroyed by a tornado last December. Students at a middle school in New Jersey will donate food to those in need. A group in Alaska hopes to raise $2500 for the Red Cross. And, perhaps simpler but no less needed, one fellow has pledged to make eye contact with and smile at everyone he meets.

There are "good deeds" we all can do right where we are that can make a real difference in the world—and that can even help prevent future terrorist attacks. We don't have to limit them to just one day either.

"Ye are all the children of light, and the children of the day: we are not of the night, nor of darkness," we read in the Bible (I Thess. 5:5). And then there's this: "Behold, what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons of God. . ." (I John 3:1). These are a firm basis for good works—works which go beyond rebuilding houses and donating food, as important as such activities can be. These and other Bible passages make it clear that we're all God's children and that we're all the recipients of His overflowing love.

Seeing ourselves and others as God's children has significant repercussions. Because God is Spirit, not matter or material, we must accept that we all are spiritual as well rather than material, mortal, and riddled with evil. That can be a startling concept at first, but it has to be true if we're God's children. Refuting the notion that we are material and mortal, Mary Baker Eddy writes in the Christian Science textbook, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures (p. 475), "The likeness of Spirit cannot be so unlike Spirit."

So maybe we're not God's children despite what the Bible says? Well, no. There's just too much proof that God, Spirit, is real, that we're His spiritual expression, and that matter and its conditions aren't the solid realities they appear to be. Day after day, Christ Jesus proved that we're spiritual by healing people through entirely spiritual means. If we weren't actually God's image and likeness (see Gen. 1:26, 27), he couldn't have done what he did. There would have been no basis for doing such works. And those works aren't confined to some long-ago time. Christian Scientists collectively today are proving day after day that everyone everywhere is spiritual by healing and solving problems the same way Jesus did. As Mrs. Eddy said, "This proof once seen, no other conclusion can be reached" (Science and Health, p. 109)—the conclusion that we're spiritual and that spiritual laws make present good possible, no matter what our material senses try to tell us.

So in many ways the best deed we can do for anyone—and for ourselves, too—is to see everyone as spiritual, as God's image and likeness. Given what the world presents to us, this can look like a tall order. All that rotten stuff has to be real, doesn't it? Again, no, no matter how obvious it seems. For instance, Jesus was once with a man who had a withered hand (see Matt. 12:10–13). Jesus could see that hand as much as the next guy could. But he just wouldn't accept it as real. As Mrs. Eddy explains, "The palsied hand moved, despite the boastful sense of physical law and order. Jesus stooped not to human consciousness, nor to the evidence of the senses. He heeded not the taunt, 'That withered hand looks very real and feels very real;' but he cut off this vain boasting and destroyed human pride by taking away the material evidence" (Unity of Good, p. 11). By curing the man, Jesus proved what's true.

We don't have to accept materiality's "vain boasting" any more than Jesus did. We don't have to accept that any of us aren't God's expression. We don't have to accept that there are evil minds out there hatching a variety of terrorist plots. Jesus provides the example in this instance too. He once confronted a fellow who was overcome with destructive material ways of thinking; no one could control this guy, and he was even destroying himself. But Jesus cured him in an instant. The mortal ways of thinking that had been controlling this man were dispelled. As the biblical account notes, he was "sitting, and clothed, and in his right mind" (Mark 5:15).

Like Jesus, we don't have to accept that destructive thinking is the fact about anyone or that it can control anyone. And by not accepting it and instead sticking with the spiritual fact that we all express the Mind that is God, we help put others on an even keel too, as Jesus proved. We realize that mortal thought processes aren't the reality and power they seem to be, just as that withered hand wasn't real.

This can be a basis for our own good deeds. As we go about our daily lives, we can refuse to accept any notion that people are controlled by anything except the Mind that is God. We may not always be successful—mortal ways of thinking can seem awfully persistent—but we can do our level best to keep our thoughts aligned with God and to let Him pull them back into alignment if we find them drifting elsewhere. As we do this on September 11 and beyond, we'll be doing a good deed that can have significant results for us and our world.

Link
The Christian Science Monitor — "In 9/11 Remembrance, a Turning to Good Deeds"