Why, yes, thank you!  I mean, who wouldn’t want milk and honey?

You might be wondering: “What’s this guy talking about—what’s the big deal with milk and honey?  If I don’t have any in the house, I’ll just head down to the local supermarket and get some!”

But the kind of milk and honey I’m speaking of can’t be purchased at a grocery store or even on the Internet.  In fact, no amount of money can buy it.  This milk and honey is the fruit of the Promised Land of the Bible (Exodus 3:8) which God promised to the ancient Israelites. And symbolically, that land represents something far greater than any geographic location.  It’s the Kingdom of Heaven, the ever-present spiritual reality whose unlimited abundance—its milk and honey—is health, harmony, and holiness!

I’ve been thinking recently about that promise—both to those ancient people and what it means to us in the 21^st century.

The Bible tells us that to possess that land was anything but a walk in the park for the Israelites.  They had to fight many battles against the inhabitants of those regions and in the process learn to be obedient to God’s directions—directions that they often misinterpreted or rebelled against.

But their most significant battles—the battles of greatest and lasting importance—were the spiritual ones within themselves to gain a deeper faith and understanding of the omnipotence, omnipresence, omniscience, and omni-activity of the one true God, divine Love.

And what about us?

Aren’t those challenges about faith and understanding faced by the Israelites so many millennia ago ultimately the same ones that we face today—indeed that humanity has faced throughout the ages?

They are.  And our battlefield is thought—the sole topography of faith and understanding.  Our fight is to clear that mental landscape of the matter-based thinking that would try to keep us enslaved to it instead of experiencing the limitless freedom of our God.  That would try to keep us from awakening to the fact that each one of us is, always has been, and always will be, the beloved child of our Father-Mother God.

Now, we can’t afford for a moment to be naïve to the methods and intent of the foe—the carnal or mortal mind—to mesmerize us into submission.  To cause us to wander through life ignorant, asleep, and apparently helpless.  To cause us to break the Two Great Commandments—loving God and loving our neighbor.

Well—how do we fight this battle?  Paul answered that question in his Second Epistle to the Corinthians (Chapter 10):

3  For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war after the flesh:

4  (For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strong holds;)

5  Casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ;

Did I hear someone out there thinking: “Whoa!  All this battle-talk is pretty intimidating!”?  OK, I get it!  Keep in mind, though, that this struggle is one that we don’t have the luxury to shy away from or put on the back burner.  As I’ve learned, it’s best to courageously take up the spiritual sword of Truth and realize that it’s none other than Almighty God who is both impelling us to do so and wielding that omnipotent blade.

Mary Baker Eddy wrote in Science and Health (page 233):

Every day makes its demands upon us for higher proofs rather than professions of Christian power. These proofs consist solely in the destruction of sin, sickness, and death by the power of Spirit, as Jesus destroyed them.

Those demands, though sometimes difficult, lead us to see, step-by-step, that the Promised Land—the land of milk and honey—is right here, right now in our lives.  And each battle fought and each victory won reveals more of that blessed panorama’s unlimited bounty—a bounty whose fruit enables us to become more effective in our God-ordained roles as Christian healers!