The old year ends and 2008 begins with financial markets in considerable turmoil. Yet The Wall Street Journal reports that some of the world's biggest cities "are proposing the most ambitious real-estate projects in a generation, a sign of growing confidence in urban living even as the current financial landscape grows bleaker."
How big are these projects? Well, one in South Korea encompasses 1,500 acres and will cost $30 billion—not exactly pocket change. In all, some 15 projects (including four in New York City, two in London and Chicago, and one each in Paris and Los Angeles) carry a $30 billion price tag.
Ambitious? To say the least. And given that, as far as credit markets are concerned, this is an inauspicious time for such projects, some developers privately wonder if the city-changing endeavors will come to fruition. But planners are forging ahead.
It all begs a big question: In these times that seem so materially oriented (greed is said to have had a lot to do with the collapse of the housing market in the US), do spiritually minded people have such ambitious plans to show the world, in concrete terms, that God is real and with us here and now? Are we confident despite what some would say is an unpropitious material outlook?
Christ Jesus famously said to his disciples, "Say not ye, There are yet four months, and then cometh harvest? behold, I say unto you, Lift up your eyes, and look on the fields; for they are white already to harvest" (John 4:35). And he also said to them as he sent them out into the cities to heal, "The harvest truly is great, but the labourers are few: pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest, that he would send forth labourers into his harvest" (Luke 10:2).
Jesus was entirely willing to lift up his eyes to God, Spirit, rather than look down and pay undue attention to the dirt, matter. He knew that God, Spirit, is real, all powerful, and here, and he knew that this could be proved in daily life. And prove it he did, healing the sick, reforming sinners, and solving problems through entirely spiritual means. He realized what was possible; he realized that the harvest of good truly is great. But he also knew people have to bring in that harvest; they have to prove that good is supreme, because the world generally says something very different.
Christian Science allows us today to be the laborers Jesus called for. It explains that God, good, is the Principle of the universe—that good is the law that undergirds the universe. The universe is actually spiritual and perfect, not material and hopelessly flawed. As Jesus said, we can "look up"—that is, keep our thought on an elevated spiritual level—and see that perfection and then prove that it's the case the same way Jesus and his disciples did, healing the sick and so on. To be successful in this, we have to see that we're perfect too, part of that perfect spiritual universe. As Mary Baker Eddy, who discovered Christian Science, writes in her book The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany (p. 242), "Christian Science is absolute; it is neither behind the point of perfection nor advancing towards it; it is at this point and must be practised therefrom. Unless you fully perceive that you are the child of God, hence perfect, you have no Principle to demonstrate and no rule for its demonstration."
A spiritual universe overflowing with good is a lot bigger than any $30 billion real-estate project. But it doesn't have to be built. It already exists. We can base our plans on it and go confidently yet humbly out into the world to help people see their present perfection. As Mrs. Eddy, quoting St. Paul, writes in the Christian Science textbook, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures (p. 39), "'Now,' cried the apostle, 'is the accepted time; behold, now is the day of salvation,'—meaning, not that now men must prepare for a future-world salvation, or safety, but that now is the time in which to experience that salvation in spirit and in life."
It sounds like a huge plan, an immense endeavor, in a material environment that tries to persuade us that matter is all encompassing. But it's a plan built on what's real. We won't bring it to full realization in a day, any more than a city completes a $30 billion development project in a day, but we can start and move steadily forward, even if there are some difficulties along the way. And all mankind will benefit.
Link
The Wall Street Journal — "A World Full of Grand Plans" (subscription required)
