May the dear Sunday School children always be gathering Easter lilies of love with happy hearts and ripening goodness.  To-day may they find some sweet scents and beautiful blossoms in their Leader’s love, which she sends to them this glad morn in the flowers and the cross from Pleasant View, smiling upon them.

Mary Baker Eddy

(My. 155:26)

Because of oppression in Hitler’s Nazi Germany, Eisenstaedt emigrated to the United States in 1935 where he lived in Jackson Heights, Queens, New York, for the rest of his life.[4] He worked as a staff photographer for Life magazine from 1936 to 1972. His photos of news events and celebrities, such as Dagmar, Sophia Loren and Ernest Hemingway, appeared on 90 Life covers.[2] Eisenstaedt was awarded the National Medal of Arts in 1989 by President George Bush in a ceremony on the White House lawn.[5]

“Sunday School;” Where Teaching and Learning Are One”

by Tom Taffel

Sunday School is where youth and inspiration mix, match and multiply.  It’s where spiritual ideas are nurtured and are encouraged to grow.

I remember one Sunday morning, the lesson sermon was on “Mind.”  My Sunday School teacher told us: “Mind is the only mechanism.”

That evening my mother challenged me to do the impossible!  When asked to open a very expensive bottle of Shalimar perfume, my father sheered off the glass top leaving the ground glass stopper permanently embedded in the unopened bottle.

As a teenager studying physics in High School, I took a quick look and knew there was no human solution to the problem short of smashing to bottle.

But then I thought for a moment, “if Mind, God is the only mechanism, then Mind was also the answer!”  So I quieted my racing thoughts and quietly listened, listened, listened to Divine Mind.  I knew I was being led … but to do what … I had no idea.

I took the bottle of Shalimar into the kitchen and turned on the gas stove.  As if a hand was guiding me, I brought the bottle close to the open flame.  In hindsight, this could have been an explosive situation and the ground glass stopper could have blasted out of the bottle dangerous force….but that didn’t happen.

After a few seconds, and at a precise moment, it was if I heard a voice say “stop!”  I immediately took the bottle away from the flame and tapped the side of the bottle on the stainless steel sink.  The stopper, went “PLOP!” as it gently lifted itself free and fell into the sink!

Having grown up in the Christian Science Sunday School — with great teachers along the way — when I graduated and became a Sunday School teacher myself, I made it my goal to challenge my students to put into practice the truths they knew were true, and then share with the class the following Sunday the results of listening, following and demonstrating the truth.

Nothing attracts like success and so my classes were always full – full with enthusiasm, interest and success.  If Mrs. Eddy’s statement is true that “We are all capable of more than we do,” than we are all capable of more dynamic healing and as we all know from firsthand experience, the opportunities are endless.  And who does’t enjoy a good challenge?

I’ve always tried to impress upon my Sunday School students that the physical healing is never as important as the truth which the error was trying to hide, and for me, as young student of high school physics, I learned the supreme lesson of not being discouraged by the mortal picture, no matter how daunting or impossible, but instead to listen to Divine Mind for guidance.

I will always be grateful to my Sunday School teacher who shared that one simple truth, long ago, as it proved the power of prayer in a way I will never forget.