“Walk while ye have the light, lest darkness come upon you” — Christ Jesus (John 12 : 35)
“The people answered him, We have heard out of the law that Christ abideth for ever: and how sayest thou, The Son of man must be lifted up? who is this Son of man? Then Jesus said unto them, Yet a little while is the light with you. Walk while ye have the light, lest darkness come upon you: for he that walketh in darkness knoweth not whither he goeth. While ye have light, believe in the light, that ye may be the children of light. ...” — John 12 : 34-36
Coming into Christian Science, I was taught that God is always speaking to us. This was at first a surprise, but with time studying and praying, and “through radical reliance on Truth” (S&H, p. 167) my “ears [could] hear a word behind thee, saying, This is the way, walk ye in it, when ye turn to the right hand, and when ye turn to the left” (Isaiah 30 : 21) and I began to be able to “Prove all things; [and] hold fast that which is good.” (I Thessalonians 5 : 21)
So we must listen for God's direction, and then be ready to act, but it needs to be in His timing. As Mary Baker Eddy wrote on page 117 of Miscellaneous Writings: “...God’s time and mortals’ differ. The neophyte is inclined to be too fast or too slow: he works somewhat in the dark; and, sometimes out of season, he would replenish his lamp at the midnight hour and borrow oil of the more provident watcher. God is the fountain of light, and He illumines one’s way when one is obedient. The disobedient make their moves before God makes His, or make them too late to follow Him. Be sure that God directs your way; then, hasten to follow under every circumstance.”
I have begun to think of walking in God's light as if I were staying in God's spotlight on stage. I once heard one actor speak highly of another by saying, “They always hit their mark.” While an actor's mark means where they stand to deliver their lines, for me it means being where God wants me, at the time He wants me there, and with the clarity of thought needed to do what He would have me do. As I write this, perhaps thinking that God is writing, directing, and lighting all my scenes isn't all that off.
It's important to state here that one definition of sin is simply to miss the mark. If you are aiming for the bull's eye, and the arrow goes anywhere else, then you've missed the mark. If you profess to follow Jesus' teachings and yet fail to “love thy neighbour as thyself” (Matthew 22 : 39) then you have missed the mark. Equally true is any sign that we have allowed animal magnetism to keep us from acheiving our right place and purpose in God's plan. Animal magnetism is simply the belief that there is a power or selfhood apart from God. Only through a realization of God's All-power and remembering “in him we live, and move, and have our being” (Acts 17 : 28) will keep us in our right place, and it feels good to be in our right place, doing what God would have us do, and knowing, in some way, however small, we “may be [one of] the children of light.”