Help at Night
ONE of our children wasn't feeling well and another was showing signs of the same illness. I was kept busy caring for them and praying for their comfort, health, and peace. Then late at night just as my head hit the pillow, our oldest child came into our bedroom complaining of the same symptoms. I thought about God's ability and willingness to heal disease and sickness. I could see by my understanding of Christian Science that the power of Truth and Love is always present. And when God's law is acknowled ged and accepted as the only law with authority to govern man, His spiritual, perfect reflection, it can actually stop disease in its tracks and immediately establish health.
As I tucked my daughter back in her bed, I talked with her of God's presence and goodness and told her to expect to feel His presence all around her. It became so clear to me as I prayed that God's law and action were fully established in my household and experience, and that the children's symptoms would not have to last a certain number of days before disappearing. The symptoms could end right then--destroyed through prayer by the power of God. Because God is all-powerful, anything unlike Him isn't rea lly a power at all, and it necessarily must submit to the all-power of God, good. That night the oldest child slept fine, and when she woke she was perfectly well and happy. She thanked God for her healing. The other two children also quickly recovered.
Mary Baker Eddy, the Founder of the Christian Science Church, describes Christ in her book Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures. She writes: ``CHRIST. The divine manifestation of God, which comes to the flesh to destroy incarnate error." Christ, the power of God which heals, destroys false beliefs about man and reveals the reality--man made in God's image.
When we open our hearts to God in prayer, Christ establishes in our consciousness the true, spiritual concept of God as the one all-loving Parent, and man as His beloved spiritual reflection, or idea. This action of Christ tenderly exposes the false beliefs about God and man that manifest themselves in sickness; it reveals them as having no support in Truth, God, and therefore no ability to resist Christ's healing power. When the false belief that man is material and vulnerable to disease is destroyed in
human consciousness, it no longer has any means of externalization. The patient loses groundless fear and yields to Christ's ministrations of love. This is how the power of Christ stops sickness and disease, ends symptoms, and destroys them. This is what happened the night my daughter was healed. We could not fear in the presence of Christ.
Sickness and disease are never really conditions of the body, although it appears this way. They are really false beliefs that must be rooted out of thought and replaced with the spiritual understanding of man's innate, God-given perfection--which is the reality and is always present. Christ Jesus illustrated the presence and power of God as he went about doing his healing work. He was able to heal the man born blind, for example, because he refused to give power to material heredity. He appealed to God' s might and prayerfully commanded that the false concept be completely destroyed, and it was.
Job, even in the midst of adversity, affirmed God's ever- presence when he said, ``In my flesh shall I see God." We, too, can cling to God's presence and gain a clearer understanding of Christ. And we can prayerfully appeal to the power of God and His Christ to destroy faulty concepts of God and man and bring out more of the perfection of spiritual reality.
