Love and compassion in caring for health needs
A Christian Science perspective: On their deepest level, love and compassion impel healing and harmony.
There was an article in my local newspaper a few years ago announcing the opening of a new hospital in the neighboring town. To meet patients’ growing demand for more holistic care, the hospital would provide care that treated the whole patient – striving to meet both spiritual and physical needs.
Intrigued, I decided to go talk with the director of the spiritual care department and learn more about it. He shared with me his view of the most helpful approach with patients – not just focusing on their physical condition, but listening compassionately, working to understand underlying challenges such as grief, stress, or depression. We talked about the importance of bringing a spirit of love and compassion into the patient’s room.
Our conversation reminded me of this line I’ve come to love in a book by Mary Baker Eddy, the founder of this publication: “If we would open their prison doors for the sick, we must first learn to bind up the broken-hearted” (“Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures,” p. 366). This seminal work explains and provides practical proof of the efficacy of spiritual healing as Christ Jesus taught and demonstrated.
Many accounts of Jesus’ healing works include the fact that he had compassion for those he healed (see, for instance, Matthew 20:34). Science and Health explains that the love he expressed involved seeing beyond the physical picture to the underlying spiritual nature of man, who was created whole and good by God. Jesus proved that the prayer that sees this true, spiritual nature of man results in complete healing. He fulfilled the promise of the book of Psalms that it is God “who heals all your diseases, who redeems your life from destruction” (103:3, 4, New King James Version).
Love that has its source in the infinite God is powerful. Divine Love can heal not only the heart, but also the whole of man.
To read accounts of how healing is occurring today through the realization of the power of divine Love, see JSH-Online.