Looking for Harmony Where It Is
We all probably want more harmony in life. Most people want happy relationships, income that balances expenses, and good health. All too often these things are lacking. Rather than something tangible and consistent, harmony can seem only an illusive hope of some brief respite from distress.
Then again, think how natural harmony seems when you hear a beautiful piece of music, look at a glorious landscape, or feel the fulfillment of a friendship going right. These do hint at the truth of our existence. The Bible teaches that God is Spirit, that we are Godlike, and that because of this we are spiritual -- not material. God expresses inexhaustible harmony, and you are His spiritual expression.
To look for your harmony somewhere besides in God, then, is a little like looking for harmony in the sounds an orchestra makes when it's tuning up. You're looking in the wrong place, in a place where harmony isn't ever found. To the degree we attempt to look to our bodies, our relationships, our homes, our workplaces to be harmonious in and of themselves, we find harmony to be at best precarious. Through prayer, though, we can increasingly understand and demonstrate that harmony in any of these human areas depends upon accepting God's power. In other words, our harmony is only secure when we are conscious of God and His laws.
This is not a pleasantly self-deceiving and abstract ideal, either. Christ Jesus proved that spiritual knowledge, which involves the underlying harmony of being, brings change to human experience, vanquishing discord.
For example, when Jesus and his disciples were confronted by the sad evidence of a man born blind, they reacted in opposite ways (see John, chap. 9). The disciples accepted the blindness at face value and tried to calculate how it had occurred. They asked, "Who did sin, this man, or his parents, that he was born blind?" (verse 2). Jesus, on the other hand, took stock only of what he knew of God's law. As God is good alone, His law is one of goodness. Jesus recognized each individual as representing God's goodness fully, by law. He answered that neither had the blind man sinned, nor his parents; that the man truly existed to glorify God as one of His perfect works (see verse 3). And Jesus proved that the discordant condition called blindness could not spoil that man's glorification of God -- he immediately healed the man.
When you confront a disturbing situation, you might find yourself, like the disciples, tempted to seek the origins of the discord. To find harmony, however, it's essential to refuse to do that. Reach instead for the spiritual facts that show how things are according to the law of good. That's looking for harmony where harmony truly is. And when you're looking for something where it actually is, you find it!
It is possible to find harmony through knowing God. The practical effects of such a discovery are physical, financial, and moral healing. The ability to express and experience harmony is unconditional. Harmony is found through prayer, which adjusts human circumstances practically.
Disturbing circumstances can never stop us from praying. They cannot rob us of our right to prove that God is ever present and that this fact brings health. According to Mary Baker Eddy, the founder of this newspaper, "Health is the consciousness of the unreality of pain and disease; or, rather, the absolute consciousness of harmony and of nothing else." She wrote this in Rudimental Divine Science (p. 11). Mrs. Eddy discovered Christian Science, on which the ideas in this article are based.
My study of Christian Science has brought me more consistent harmony. Colds and more severe physical conditions, unbalanced budgets, and rocky relationships have all been healed. I have become convinced that harmony is attainable.
Good is the nature of God and His creation forever. Looking for harmony in God, we find it.
