Can God heal?

She sat on my porch, gently rocking in the glider and fighting back tears. As she looked at her bandaged hand she told me what had happened. An ugly wart, twice removed by surgery, was again growing. She spoke of the pain and inconvenience and then asked, ''Can God heal things like warts?''

I loved my dear friend and welcomed this opportunity to reassure her that God could and would heal any and every discordant element in our lives - yes, including warts.

So together my friend and I considered some basic spiritual facts of God and man. We read from the Bible in the first chapter of Genesis, ''And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness . . . . And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good.'' n1

n1 Genesis 1:26, 31.

I had been a student of Christian Science for only a few years, but I had had ample proof that prayer could heal difficulties of every nature, great or small. Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, writes, ''The prayer that reforms the sinner and heals the sick is an absolute faith that all things are possible to God, - a spiritual understanding of Him, an unselfed love.'' n2

n2 Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 1.

We reasoned that because God is Spirit, as the Bible teaches, His image and likeness could not be other than spiritual. And because God is Love, He is capable of creating only loveliness for His beloved children. Love could not create an element of pain, of discord or ugliness. My friend did not find this difficult to accept. Next, we reasoned that the very act of accepting this spiritual fact required a refusal to accept the evidence of ugliness or deformed growth, even in this small instance. And this raised some questions.

How can one deny the physical evidence, which seems so valid? And how does this evidence of discord measure up to a concept of God as good and therefore a perfect creator? Well, that's the point. It doesn't. If God created all, and all is good, then nothing ugly, deformed, or painful can have any true existence.

I encouraged my friend to think about these things and to remember Christ Jesus' words, ''Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.'' n3 I encouraged her to look away from and even deny the evidence of unnatural growth and discomfort and to ''know the truth.''

n3 John 8:32.

Sometimes such statements seem so simple that one is reluctant to take them at face value. We may be tempted to think that a healing prayer must include something more mystical or complicated. However, a realization of the simple spiritual facts of God and His creation, coupled with the admission that all things are indeed possible to God, can be a profound and powerful remedy, bringing about an adjustment in our lives - healing.

I did not hear from my friend for several weeks. Then she returned to show me a hand completely smooth with no spot or abnormality. We thanked God together, and then she smilingly told me that not only had she been healed, but that several small warts on her son's head had been completely healed. She related that one day when cutting his hair she firmly acknowledged that the same power that healed her wart could also heal his. At the time of the next haircut, the warts, which had been there for years, were completely gone.

There is nothing too hard for God. Or too small. Or too insignificant. DAILY BIBLE VERSE Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits: who forgiveth all thine iniquities; who healeth all thy diseases. Psalms 103:2, 3