Healings Far and Wide

       


        Thinking this afternoon about how many of us owe much to the woman who discovered and founded Christian Science, Mary Baker Eddy.  The men, women and children around the world that have benefitted from what she revealed of divine truths! 

        And in thanking God for giving Mrs. Eddy what He did, my thoughts went to a dear friend of ours from Australia who shared a marvelous healing of malaria contracted during WWII.  Paul Jones was sent home from the jungle to convalesce and though it looked grim for a while, he told us, his complete healing did come.  A Christian Science Chaplain gave him prayerful treatment, for which our friend was ever after grateful.

        A poet and sculptor, Paul sent us the following poem written just after the war which I'd like to share with my readers.


FATHER I AM BACK


I'm back.
I've been away at wars
but never without You
to guide and protect me.

Desert, dark jungle,
strife packed beach,
torrential river,
You were there.
Arid sand, sunless track,
safe landing or embarking,
engulfing, swollen stream,
claimed I was on my own.
Yet deep down
I knew that
You were always there.

And now I'm back,
back to rest in Your garden,
to gave on its loveliness,
its blossoms of promise,
it's awakening flowers
Your unfolding purpose
for my brother and me,
just as You always open
"the petals of a holy purpose
in order that
the purpose may appear" (1)

Father, now I know it was a dream,
I was never really away from You.
My 'returned' medal
of no real significance.
Just as You told my brother
"Son, you are always with me,
and all that is mine is yours." (2)

Father I am back.


                               (l) Mary Baker Eddy
                               (2)  Luke 15:31

Christ Freeing

                                            John Robert Howell





                    Christ Freeing


           What the Beloved knew
                     and taught,
               Science repeats,
           Through understanding
                   dearly sought,
            With fierce heartbeats;



             Forever present, bounteous,
                     free,
            Christ comes in Father's grace
                  to heal you and me,
            To believing matter real
                   blessedly efface.
                         

A Healing Insight While Shopping One Day

        Several years ago, I was out hiking one beautiful October day through a wooded area some streets over from our house.  I jumped over a fence when nearly home.  The fence wasn't so high actually, it's just that I landed crooked.  The pain in my ankle was severe.  I managed to hobble into the house, and as my husband was standing there in the kitchen, I asked him to help me prayerfully with this problem.

        The rest of that afternoon and evening were challenging. But I knew from years of experience that God is always present to heal us.  I felt confident relying totally on His help, and prayed fervently to realize my selfhood as God's spiritual image and likeness.  I reminded myself that man as made by God--my true and only identity--was spiritual, not material, and not subject to physical suffering.

        To my relief, when I got out of bed the next morning, I could place a little pressure on this foot.  This encouraged me to keep praying.  Improvement continued all that day, and by evening, I found I could attend a homeowner's meeting around the next cul-de-sac.  I did have to go down some stairs to their basement for the meeting, which I had to take slowly.  And most interesting, our host was in a chair with one foot proper up on another chair.  He told us he had badly injured his ankle playing basketball.  And this is the part that stood out to me and made me so grateful for Christian Science:  the doctor said he'd be off that leg for about six weeks. 

        Feeling almost one hundred percent back to easy mobility, I decided to do some errands downtown.  I was shuffling along a street having just left a shop when something happened I've never forgotten.  A spiritual insight stopped me cold on the sidewalk.  With crystal clarity, I saw that the injury and pain were not part of me, had never been part of me.  "Why, I don't have to creep along with this difficulty.  There's no need for gradual improvement.  This never happened to me as God's reflection!"

        Instantly, I felt something being adjusted physically.  The remaining discomfort disappeared.  While it's hard to put into words, I knew and felt that I was completely healed, right then and there.  I walked on freely and normally.  This experience showed me the mental nature of recuperation.

        Mary Baker Eddy writes in Unity of Good, "Jesus required neither cycles of time nor thought in order to mature fitness for perfection and its possibilities."  Time does not actually enter into Christian Science healing.  Why is this?  Because what appears to be a physical problem is, in reality, wholly mental.  It is but a phase of mortal belief, objectified.  As it becomes clear that we're not dealing with a real condition that needs to be changed but only with an erroneous mental state, a misconception of man's true spiritually-intact selfhood, we stop being afraid of or impressed with debility.  What appears real to erring human belief is not a reality to man in God's likeness. It has never been real at all. Our need, therefore, is always for a change of consciousness from a material to a spiritual basis, to the recognition that God is perfect and that we are His perfect, spiritual reflection--now and forever.  This enlightened mental state is then objectified in our experience as healing, as normality and freedom.

        As it was for me in this experience I've shared.

       

A Most Rewarding Activity

        And the rewards from doing this can be life-changing.  What is she driving at here, some of you may wonder.  A review of what Christ Jesus said and taught, or a reading of these sublime words for the first time.

        Every so often I make it a practice to get my Bible with Jesus' words marked in red, and start at the beginning of all he said as though it's for the first time I've seen them.  And given that one's understanding of God gets clearer as he or she goes along, if that person is seriously committed to knowing God better, Christ's teachings can light up in new ways.  We may feel, why I didn't see this before.

        So powerful are these words that we cannot ponder and practice them without blessings in our everyday lives, many of which can leave one amazed.  But being that divine fire is behind what Jesus said and taught, why should anyone wonder at what they can do?

God's Help, Wherever We Are

                                           John Robert Howell


                                    (Written for the those new to
                                             Christian Science)



        As one outgrows the carefree, happy days of childhood and encounters the responsibilities and challenges comprising maturity, he may at times long for the love, comfort, and counsel afforded him as a child.  Since it is not possible to turn back the clock to those years of dependency, must one forgo loving support in his present day-today life?

        One of the many passages throughout the Bible that reveal God as the tender, watchful guardian of all is "God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble" (Psalm 46:1).  And Christ Jesus, who was ever conscious of God's unfailing care for His children, said:  "He that sent me is with me:  the Father hath not left me alone" (John 8:29).  God's constant love and support are still at hand for all who yearn for heavenly help.

        Many who have felt alone and afraid before problems of lack, fear, sin, or sickness have found solace, support, and healing through the study of Christian Science.  Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, writes in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 332):  "Father-Mother is the name for Deity, which indicates His tender relationship to His spiritual creation.  As the apostle expressed it in words which he quoted with approbation from a classic poet:  'For we are also His offspring.'"

        Christian Science shows that since man is God's offspring, His image and likeness, as the Bible reveals, man is spiritual and perfect, continuously reflecting the Father's love. This spiritual identity, the true selfhood of us all, is not helpless before the mortal claims of fear, lack, sorrow, and discord.  These erroneous beliefs, which seem so real to the unenlightened thought, stem from ignorance of man's inseparable relationship to God, divine Love, and are corrected by spiritual understanding.

        Mortal suffering is an illusion of the physical senses, a lie about God's perfect creation.  It is like the bad dream a child has at night--frightening to him, yet not real to the loved one awake at his side.  And what comfort the child feels when he wakes and sees that he is not alone and there is nothing to fear.

        When, through spiritual understanding, we arouse ourselves from the mortal dream of life in matter, to the reality of the truth of spiritual being, we experience the sense of security that comes only from a knowledge of spiritual reality.

        Anyone can be free now, the moment he awakes to Truth, and can know the comfort and assurance of man's God-bestowed peace, joy, and security through realizing that man is ever with his heavenly Father.