The Opioid Epidemic

        Was just talking to a neighbor who was also enjoying the almost summerlike weather after so many frigid days. We got into a discussion about today's front-page article in The New York Times on opioids.  This focused on the problem in New Hampshire where it like many states in the US have aa crisis on their hands.  This lady, who confessedly is not religious, who doesn't even believe in God she told me, said something so interesting.  "My doctor keeps trying to make me take opioids, but I refuse.  I don't want to become addicted. I blame the current epidemic on the doctors and the pharmaceutical companies."


        As I walked back in the house, couldn't stop thinking about being healthy and staying that way without dependence on drugs.  Being a student of Christian Science with its focus on turning to God for health and well-being, I felt so grateful no one has to go the way of possible addiction to pain-killers.


        It is a source of comfort to many men and women that there is a way disease can be healed through a deepening understanding of God, Spirit.  The Bible speaks of God's all-power, and it tells of people through the ages who have proved His uplifting and healing power.  One of the many passages in the Scriptures that convey the confidence inspired by spiritual understanding is this one from Psalms:  "In God I will praise his word, in God I have put my trust; I will not fear what flesh can do unto me."


        To overcome illness does not mean ignoring it but rather involves undermining its very foundation.  Many people are doing through applying the liberating and strengthening spiritual truths found in Christ Jesus' teachings.  The Master understood fully the inseparability of man from God.  He knew that man is God's child, spiritual, whole, and eternally perfect in Him.  Discerning something of our real being as God's spiritual image, and expressing the purity that characterizes that being, we can come to feel the assurance of God's healing help.  It is experienced to the degree that we are aware of God's omnipresence and perfect upholding of His creation, of you and me and everyone else.


        Jesus' healings illustrate that man is not truly a fleshly mortal at the mercy of whatever disease happens to be prevalent; that man is not helpless when confronting disease.  Moreover, Jesus promised his followers, ,"If ye continue in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed; and ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free."


        Everyone can learn the truth that God is omnipotent, and that man is the likeness of God.  As the image of his creator, man forever expresses the divine nature.  And because God is Spirit, man is spiritual.  To be sure, we appear to be merely flesh and bones and subject to suffering.  But physicality isn't the actual or ultimate substance of our being.  Life in the flesh is a misconception of man, whose real identity as the image of God is incorporeal, untouched by debilitating physical conditions.


        In Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, the woman who discovered and founded Christian Science, Mary Baker Eddy writes:  "The physical healing of Christian Science results now, as in Jesus' time, from the operation of divine Principle, before which sin and disease lose their reality in human consciousness and disappear as naturally and as necessarily as darkness gives place to light and sin to reformation.  Now, as then, these mighty works are not supernatural, but supremely natural.  They are the sign of Immanuel, or 'God with us,' -- a divine influence ever present in human consciousness and repeating itself, coming now as was promised aforetime,


                                  To preach deliverance to the captives [of sense],
                                  And recovering of sight to the blind,
                                  To set at liberty that are bruised."


        With the Christly understanding that a study of Christian Science brings, anyone can turn to God for every aspect of his health and well-being, proving to his own satisfaction that joy that "the Lord will take away from thee all sickness."


         


       


       

Heavenly Counsel

When life has you up against it,
and you don't know what to do
and bewildered, you wonder
who can I take this problem to?
Heed the angel that says
"Why not take it to God"
You will be oh so glad
 that you did.



"Look unto me and be ye saved,
for I am God and there is
         none else."

       Holy Bible

A Remarkable Woman

The secret of her influence on my life,
This woman I admire"
I think it was Christ's impact on her health
And life, her heart set afire
To reach people all over the world
With God's divine method of healing.


This remarkable woman, Mary Baker Eddy,*
Loved many things I have read.
Little children, people in need.
But she loved Christ more, she said.
"...more than all the world"**
She lived her life wholly self-forgoing.


This lady yearned to know
The things that Jesus knew.
She prayed and toiled and leaned on God,
And He always brought her through.
And because she wrote what God revealed
My life is blessed beyond telling.


And not my life alone,
But lives all over the earth.
For what this Christ follower did
Is showing mankind their present worth
As God's perfect-right-now creation --
His healing power extending.


*The Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science
**Message to The Mother Church for 1901, page 28

Strength

Need more strength to do
all the things you need to do?
Think of this fact divine:
As God's reflection,
His image and likeness,
held intact in original perfection.
unlimited energy is yours and mine,
a God-bestowed quality forever ours.
We need only realize this,
claim it as present right now.







Some revitalizing spiritual truths --


From the Bible:




"I can do all things through Christ
which strengthenth me (Phil 4:13)


"God is our refuge and strength..."
(Ps. 46:1)


"The Lord is my strength and song"


"They that wait upon the Lord shall renew
their strength; they shall mount up with wings
as eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk
and not faint"
(Isaiah 40:31)
(Ps. 118:14)








And from the writings of Mary Baker Eddy,
(Science and Health with Key to the
                 Scriptures)




"Anatomy declares man to be structural.  Physiology continues this explanation, measuring human strength by bones and sinews, and human life by material law.  Man is spiritual, individual, and eternal:  material structure is mortal."


"Rise in the strength of Spirit to resist all that is unlike good.  God has made man capable of this, and nothing can vitiate the ability and power divinely bestowed on man."  (Pg. 393)


"God pours the riches of His love into the understanding, and gives us strength according to our day."

"All that God imparts moves in accord with Him reflecting goodness and power,"  (Pg. 515)
(Pg. 5)