Finding health in God

IN order to restore instantly a man's hand that was, to all appearances, hopelessly withered,1 Christ Jesus must have looked for knowledge and evidence of wholeness to a source superior to physicality. Jesus plainly considered this higher view of form and condition -- health found in God -- to be available to all. Otherwise he would not have taught his followers to heal as he did, by spiritual means alone. It is a right and a privilege to prove through prayer and Christian practice that health is constant and sound in quality. In fact, when health is spiritually understood to be the natural condition of man as the child of God, perfect Mind, health can be correctly perceived as invariable. And a full salvation must inescapably include health.

What enables me to say all this? After years of curtailment from what was medically diagnosed as a heart condition, my health was restored through prayer. Imagine my gratitude to have been able to enjoy painless, unwearied, normal activity during the more than twenty-five years since that healing!

Study and application of Christian Science, the law of God that Jesus practiced, taught me that health is divine harmony, which man, as God's likeness, reflects. Through Science I have learned that true health describes the very animus of God, the divine Soul with which we commune when we pray.

The Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, Mary Baker Eddy, writes, ``The true consciousness is the true health.''2 In proportion as we draw into accord with divine Soul, which is conscious only of good, we draw into accord with true health. Cherishing spiritual consciousness through prayer and purification of thought -- letting God be our Mind -- shows itself outwardly in restoration and maintenance of strength, substance, and vitality.

As misconceptions of God and man are corrected and sinful traits of character are shed, health shines through our purified natures. We spiritually wake to realize in a degree that God is actually our only Mind, Soul, Life, or consciousness and therefore the only genuine source of health. Becoming conscious of God and His perfect creation, including man created in His likeness, we become conscious of true health, which in reality cannot be lost, diminished, or defective, since God Himself produces and preserves it.

God acts in human lives through His Christ, the spiritual idea of manhood that Jesus supremely exemplified. Christ removes whatever is unlike God and so brings to light our true nature as Godlike man.

As we express our true identity as God's man through Christianized living, we feel and know the unattackable stronghold of health, the omnipotent consciousness of Love, God, that forever embraces us. We become conscious of Love and its harmonies through loving God and our neighbor unselfishly. But our efforts to obey Jesus' command to love God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength3 soon teach us that such loving involves much more than standing far-off in awe of Him as one might look up to a sort of super-father. Loving God is an effect of the close acquaintance with Him that Jesus showed to be native to us. It's an effect of worshiping God as Spirit and therefore denying materialism in daily practice.

We honor God when we challenge the claims of the physical senses, as Jesus did when he healed the man whose hand was withered. As we fill our thought with certainty of divine power, dismissing the mistaken conviction that physique can constitute God's likeness or give a dependable report as to our true status, we are ready to glorify God in healing.

1See Matthew 12:10-13. 2Miscellaneous Writings, p. 298. 3See Mark 12:30.

You can find more articles like this one in the Christian Science Sentinel, a weekly magazine. DAILY BIBLE VERSE: Heal me, O Lord, and I shall be healed; save me, and I shall be saved: for thou art my praise. Jeremiah 17:14