Love heals

ONE of the most comforting messages ever given mankind is found in the New Testament: ''God is love.'' 1 In harmony with this truth, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, Mary Baker Eddy, writes, ''Divine Love always has met and always will meet every human need.'' 2 And today many are proving that God, divine Love, is indeed an ever-present help.

n1 I John 4:8.

n2 Science and Health, pg. 494.

It is wonderful to feel loved. How often we long to know that someone cares! Loving involves so much-comforting, helping, guiding. Experiencing this can be very satisfying. But think of the full and constant care our Father-Mother Love gives us!

It may seem difficult, even impossible, to believe that God can help us or that He loves every one of us. Of course God does not love, nor did He create, sin. But He does love man, created in His likeness, and that's our true identity, this moment and always. So we can come to feel God's love.

We actually are His reflection, expressing His perfect goodness and love. And as we hold to this truth as the reality of our own and everyone's selfhood, it will become increasingly evident in our lives. This does not mean that evil and disease are simply ignored by Christian Scientists. The ills that plague mankind are instead seen as baseless phenomena of materialistic thinking-in the final analysis, unrealities. And because they're untrue, they can be healed through prayer. Love gives us the ability to do this.

Our Master, Christ Jesus, was conscious of Love's healing power in the greatest degree ever known. His understanding of Love's presence and omnipotence enabled him not only to touch a leper but to heal him.3 This courageous, compassionate act gives but a glimpse of the Christly love he expressed so fully.

n3 Mark 1:40-42.

An understanding of Love and its healing power is practical today just as it was two thousand years ago. Several years ago this fact was vividly proved to me. I was preparing for a busy week that included a job interview and an important trip. Several days before the interview I noticed a little rash on my hand. My forehead had been itchy for a few days as well, but I hadn't thought much about it. I looked at my hand, and then in the mirror at my forehead. There appeared to be a case of poison ivy. The several bouts I had had with this difficulty before I became a student of Christian Science had been painful and lengthy.I couldn't help recalling how it had spread to virtually every part of my body.

I was filled with fear and needed help! I felt impelled to turn to page 578 in the Christian Science textbook, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures. Here Mrs. Eddy gives the spiritual sense of the twenty-third Psalm in the Bible:

(Divine love) is my shepherd; I shall not want.

(Love) maketh me to lie down in green pastures: (love) leadeth me beside the still waters.

(Love) restoreth my soul (spiritual

sense) . . . .

I stopped right there. I had found what I needed. My consciousness was filled with an awareness of God's unfailing love for His man, and that included me. I was no longer afraid, and knew I was healed. At that same moment the irritation completely ceased. The rashes stopped spreading, and by the end of that day they began to disappear. When I left on my trip, one week later, there wasn't even a trace remaining.

Yes, Love heals. And we can prove it! DAILY BIBLE VERSE I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to seperate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. Romans 8:38,39