Isaiah 30:21 (NIV) – Whether you turn to the right or to the left, your ears will hear a voice behind you, saying, “This is the way; walk in it.”
Many years ago I was visiting regularly with a good friend. As is common with some people, all they could talk about was their illnesses – which seemed to be ‘legion’…. While they wanted to be lifted above their sense of the illness, the conversation came back to it time and time again. As if in discussing it, like I was a doctor or something, it would get them both sympathy and healing. Sometimes I think they were looking to get a ‘rise’ in me — while I was trying to get another sort of rise for them, for me in consciousness.
As a Christian Scientist I was raised without a lot of medical talk or jargon. There were no vitamins on our table and no discussion of disease. We were not fascinated by the latest disease to hit the papers and no talk of new medications or surgery techniques. It simple wasn’t any part of my experience growing up.
But now, I have fallen into a trap, — a hole. News around the world focuses intensely on the Covid19 virus or the CCP virus. I seemed to be fascinated by it and was probably trying to be the ‘smartest person in the room’ about it. I even noted the death counts and disease patterns as they were announced from early January 2020. I could see it coming — and warned my kids to stock up. I ordered a special mask from Amazon just before they became unavailable. I was SO smart. While still studying the weekly Christian Science Bible Lesson daily, I’d have the news on in the background. I even experienced some of the symptoms around mid-March. Even writing this, I see where I went wrong. I was so lost.
We relied on our religion for healing all throughout my childhood. My family had been students of Christian Science since a great-great-Uncle introduced my mom’s mom to it in the 1920’s. My dad’s mom came to it as a young German immigrant to the US ten years earlier. I was blessed to have both grandmas at church on Sundays. It wasn’t a blind belief operating within my family, it was an atmosphere of well being and normality. It was an understanding based on learning more about the nature of God and man as his expression. I seemed to have lost the sense of well being.
So I turned back to what I knew to be true, and Truth! Like the verse I opened with….I listened for the inner voice of healing truth. I could see that these symptoms were no part of me – so to speak. And while working prayerfully to see what was part of me— the ‘me’ created by God in his image and likeness, the reality of health overtook the seemingly obvious illness. The aha moment came when I no longer was even thinking about the news or body. Just God.
Mary Baker Eddy, the discover of Christian Science and the founder of the Christian Science church, wrote in her textbook on healing Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures:
Disease is an experience of mortal mind. It is fear made manifest on the body. Divine Science takes away this physical sense of discord, just as it removes a sense of moral or mental in-harmony.
Hold thought steadfastly to the enduring, the good, and the true, and you will bring these into your experience proportionately to their occupancy of your thoughts.
The reason I believe Truth (with a capital T), a synonym for God, can make a difference in our lives is based on the many, many times I have experienced the sort of course-correction that occurs when God enters into the scene. While taking the now-normal precautions with masks and such, it is clear to me that taking my thought up to where Truth is — there is healing.
o live and let live, without clamor for distinction or recognition; to wait on divine love; to write truth first on the tablet of one’s own heart – this is the sanity and perfection of living, and my human ideal.
All quotations by Mary Baker Eddy.
God is Living Me 