Skip to footer

A Christmas reflection

What better way to celebrate the Christmas season than to put into practice the healing ideas Jesus taught and demonstrated? That’s what a woman did after awaking one Christmas morning with a swollen and inflamed face.

  • By Karen Neff

Christian Science Perspective audio edition
Loading the player...

The morning had begun early, and before turning on any lights I sat in the dark, praying and singing hymns of praise and gratitude to God for His goodness. It was Christmas! I felt deeply inspired and was especially grateful for the Christ, Truth – God’s healing message of love for all, which Jesus demonstrated so beautifully.

But when I stepped into the bathroom and turned on the light, what looked back at me in the mirror was shocking. My eyes were swollen and my face was red and inflamed.

How can this be, I asked myself, especially on this most holy of days? How could this ugliness appear after I had just finished praising God for the gift of Christ Jesus to the world?

An answer to this question immediately came to mind in the form of a Bible verse: “Be not deceived; God is not mocked” (Galatians 6:7). The seeming randomness of this thought was as startling to me as the image in the mirror! But it also really spoke to me. It prompted me to consider that what I was seeing was actually a deception about my real nature – a false, distorted picture being presented to me by the carnal mind.

Christian Science explains that the only legitimate Mind is God and is not in matter. The fallacious so-called mortal mind presents an inverted view of creation that contradicts our genuine, spiritual individuality as God’s children. God’s view of us as spiritual, good, and whole can never be altered or disturbed.

Christ Jesus came to show us all who we really are – the light and glory of God. The Bible puts it this way: “God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” (II Corinthians 4:6). And the healing works Jesus did proved the true beauty and wholeness and goodness of God, expressed in His children.

As I thought about all this on that Christmas morning, I saw clearly that the reflection in the mirror was a blatant mockery of that glory, a false claim that we are not truly God’s pure, unblemished children. What could this distorted image tell me about God, Spirit, good? Nothing! And so, it couldn’t tell me the truth about myself as made in God’s spiritual image, either.

I had planned to travel to another state to spend Christmas with family. It might have been tempting to stay home and hide my face, but I took a strong mental stand for the power of the ever-present Christ, Truth, to reveal the real, inviolate, spiritual view of creation. I felt divinely led to make the trip as planned.

By the time I arrived at my family’s home later that morning, the condition was already fading. There was no trace of swelling or redness by the next day.

That was a number of years ago, but the lesson of that Christmas morning has stayed with me and is a reminder each Christmas of the true meaning of this holy day. The greatest gift of all is the shift in thought and healing that come as we recognize what Christ Jesus taught and demonstrated: that God-given purity and health are ours to accept and experience, every day of the year.

“Thanks be unto God for his unspeakable gift!” (II Corinthians 9:15).

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.
editor@csmonitor.com
Subscribe
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

QR Code to A Christmas reflection
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/Commentary/A-Christian-Science-Perspective/2021/1221/A-Christmas-reflection
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe