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.


       

Light, Lovely Light

Light is seen in so many lovely ways:


        --In ducks gliding across a pond,
                  Leaving long streaks of
                  Shining in their wake;


        --In a little child's happy eyes;


        --In a face glowing with love,


        --The setting sun in a forest.


        But exceeding all that God's
        Wondrous creation can show
        Is that light Jesus promises:


        "He that followeth me shall
          Not walk in darkness, but
          Shall have the light of life."

                           (John 8:12)

Keeping Thoughts Where They Belong

On, God, Mind -- Our source and being.

If my experience is any measure,

Problems arise when thoughts

Are not enough on Him --

Man's greatest treasure.

"Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace,

Whose mind is stayed on thee"

Isaiah 26:3 points out:

"Stayed" on Him --

Not on earthly cares

And pointless pleasure.

One can keep things right,

By having our dear Father

More in our mental sight.

Safe On the Rock

                                             John Robert Howell



        Sometimes just remaining afloat on the turbulent ocean of material existence is a victory and cause for rejoicing, but eventually a vigorous effort will need to be made to get to the shore and the "Rock of Ages...Safe above life's raging sea."  (Hymns 293-95).  Some humble, receptive students of Christian Science may surf in on a wave hanging ten, if that's the correct term, with maddening ease while others may flounder and half drown for a time before being cast up like grateful Jonahs upon "Life's shore."

        One way to speed up the journey to the beach is to begin thinking much more deeply and prayerfully about every word and sentence in Science and Health.  Mary Baker Eddy's rich and precise vocabulary was not a prideful display of erudition.  She knew the difficulty of expressing pure metaphysics and Science in human language, and therefore chose her words with inspired foresight.  A failure to properly discern these shades of meaning and let them lead one on in their "Kindly Light" may have one adrift on the frothy whitecaps of opaque or meaningless expressions and sentences.

        To allow oneself to be happily deceived into a false sense of security about the requirements of obedience and way-marks of real progress is to risk being abandoned on the becalmed and dispiriting waters of that "Ancient Marriner" of whom Coleridge wrote, "Water, water, everywhere,/Nor any drop to drink."

        But this need not happen to the dedicated student of our Leader's inspired writings. How blessed we are to have them.

In His Care, Always

"God is with you,
In everything you do"* --
Words so very true,
Meant for me and you;
On a bookmark they are,
A friend sent from afar.
Whether night or day,
At home or when away,
Feeling up and cheery,
Or downhearted and weary,
A faith-lighted thought this --
That our loving Father is
Never apart from us.
Is this not glorious? --
That His care does surround,
His loving arms are around
All those we love,
Besides them always, above --
And not only those we greet,
But those we may never meet.
What would mankind do
If this were not true?
Oh, but this is the case,
Something no one can erase.
God with us  -- what a treasure,
Comfort beyond all measure.


*Genesis 21:22