Healing gloom

IT'S sometimes called ``the blues'' or ``the pits.'' But no matter what you call it, gloom in all its forms can be healed. How? By humbly accepting and understanding what the Bible shows us--man's innate spirituality as God's beloved child. When we begin to glimpse this spirituality through prayer, discern the wholeness and satisfaction of our true selfhood in God, we experience a freeing, uplifting change of thought. We feel the influence of the healing, regenerating Christ-power--the power that enabled Christ Jesus to lift multitudes out of illness and despair centuries ago.

God's power to uplift and heal through His ever-present Christ has always been available to the meek--the receptive heart that is beginning to see something of man's spiritual nature. The prophet wrote, ``The Lord hath anointed me to preach good tidings unto the meek; he hath sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound;...to give unto them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness.''1

Even if we see gloom and despair all around us, we can come to feel through prayer the spiritual peace of man's absolute oneness with God. This is not to ignore evil but to gain a conviction that, despite circumstances, good is the absolute and ultimate reality. And this perception can't help having an uplifting influence on others as well as ourselves.

I once found myself trying to decide exactly what had caused a particular siege of depression. Finally I turned to the Bible passage quoted above and began to rejoice in the freedom of man's true being. I actively thanked God for His loving provision for all mankind's needs.

I then remembered that in one of her poems Mary Baker Eddy, who discovered and founded Christian Science, writes about the saving power of God's Word: Mourner, it calls you,--``Come to

my bosom, Love wipes your tears all away, And will lift the shade of gloom, And for you make radiant room Midst the glories of one endless

day.''2

As I read and pondered these lines the gloom lifted. When I quit trying to analyze what had brought on the mood and instead opened my heart to deep and abiding gratitude for the wonderful fact of my unity with God, the depression was healed. Regardless of appearances, we are always inseparable from Him as His beloved offspring, satisfied and at peace. We don't have to give in to swings of mood or frantically search for mood-changing remedies. We can meekly don ``the garment of praise'' and feel secure in God's boundless love for us. When praise for His goodness fills our hearts, gloom gives way to divine grace, and gratitude lifts off heaviness.

1Isaiah 61:1, 3. 2Poems, p. 75. You can find more articles like this one in the Christian Science Sentinel, a weekly magazine. DAILY BIBLE VERSE I will praise thee, O Lord my God, with all my heart: and I will glorify thy name for evermore. For great is thy mercy toward me: and thou hast delivered my soul from the lowest hell . . . . Thou, O Lord, art a God of compassion, and gracious, long-suffering, and plenteous in mercy and truth. Psalms 86:12, 13, 15