Inseparable From God
YOU are not isolated. You are not alone. You are not separated from good things. In fact, you are not separate from God! My own experiences have proved to me that these statements, straight from the Bible, are not just comforting. They also heal.
In his letter to the Christians at Rome, St. Paul asked rhetorically, "Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?" (Romans 8:35) That list of tribulations sounds much like some of the disturbing situations in the news reports of today. We may even feel that we can relate to these situations in our own lives.
But Paul was certain of overwhelming victory in the face of all this. Why? He went on to say, "Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us. For 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 separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord" (verses 37-39).
Paul was speaking from experience; he was familiar with tribulation. But he had also seen something of God that made him fearless of those incredibly difficult circumstances. In his ministry he conveyed what his knowledge of God meant to him. He gave others hope, in describing the absolutely unconditional love of God that Jesus had taught. As we ourselves glimpse even a little of that unconditional love, our lives change-sometimes dramatically, as was the case with Paul, and sometimes very gently. But always for the better.
A book, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, contains a chapter called "Atonement and Eucharist." Here its author, Mary Baker Eddy, agrees with Paul in saying, "Jesus of Nazareth taught and demonstrated man's oneness with the Father, and for this we owe him endless homage" (p. 18). Throughout the book this simple message continues: we simply cannot be separated from God, divine Love.
In fact, reading Science and Health reveals that this simple message is what unlocks the door to healing in the same way that Jesus healed. This healing is not by miracle, but by understanding the creator's inseparability from all that He made, which doesn't vary for any man, woman, or child.
A healing in my own life offers a modest insight into the way this understanding heals. Shinsplints was a painful condition that gave me a great deal of trouble. It made it impossible for me to run any distance for sport. One day while out for a walk, I was thinking about what I was learning of my relation to God through my study of Christian Science. This Science was discovered by Mrs. Eddy in 1866, and is discussed in full in Science and Health. While my legs were aching somewhat, I was very much concentrating on the idea of what it means that none of us can ever be separated from God and His unconditional love. Actually, I had been singing a hymn silently from the Christian Science Hymnal. I got to the second stanza that says: "I fear no tribulation, / Since, whatsoe'er it be, / It makes no separation / Between my Lord and me" (No. 135). I suddenly understood that what I had been learning about God applied directly to the "tribulation" of shinsplints. Either God was true, or disease and pain were true; but both couldn't be, because disease and pain are evil and not at all the nature of God, who is good. My health-my state of wellness-was not, I saw, governed by muscle and bone. It was wholly governed by God, from whom there was no separation, but in whom was complete wholeness. The pain in my legs ceased instantly. That was over eight years ago. I now run often, for sport, and have never again had any symptoms of shinsplints.
It's one thing to say that none of us is separate from the love of God. But it's another that we are healed as we see-understand-the truth of this. You can begin to understand the power of those words Paul spoke, "Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us." And you can feel a joy that you may never have dreamed was possible.
