Finding Healing In the Bible

I WAS wakened in the middle of the night by a sudden and severe pain. The pain seemed overwhelming. I reached out to God for help in prayer, remembering the words from a Bible verse in Psalms I'd read that day: "The Lord God is a sun and shield: the Lord will give grace and glory: no good thing will he withhold from them that walk uprightly.

I had thought earlier that day of God as a sun, which to me meant that God is Love, and that His shining love embraces all His children. Also I had considered how the light that is associated with the sun is emblematic of the inspiration and understanding of God, displacing the ignorance of darkened thought.

These thoughts of God as a sun were very comforting. But now I also began to think of God as a shield. A shield protects from harm or injury; it keeps one safe. I saw that God is man's protection from harm. He is ever present and He is good. Man, the spiritual image and likeness of God, is always protected and maintained by God, his Father-Mother. This insight into the nature of God and His love for His child, man, was a healing one, and I was soon free from discomfort. There was no return of the pain.

The inspired Word of the Bible has healed and is healing people. This healing is going on today as certainly as it did during Christ Jesus' day. Jesus knew that the inspired truths of the Bible came from God, for the saving of the whole world. Jesus' healing work demonstrated the truths of the Bible.

From girlhood Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, cherished the Bible. Her discovery, she realized, was of an underlying spiritual law that explains the healing record of New Testament Christianity. She spent years studying the Bible, listening for God's revelation and inspiration. The culmination of this search was her book Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures. In it she writes: "I have set forth Christian Science and its application to the treatment of disease jus t as I have discovered them. I have demonstrated through Mind the effects of Truth on the health, longevity, and morals of men; and I have found nothing in ancient or in modern systems on which to found my own, except the teachings and demonstrations of our great Master and the lives of prophets and apostles. The Bible has been my only authority. I have had no other guide in 'the straight and narrow way' of Truth.

As a youngster, I was encouraged to turn to the Bible for inspiration and healing by my parents and also by my Sunday School teachers. I remember one summer day when, after walking through a patch of tall weeds, I developed an itchy rash on my legs. I went home, climbed onto my bed, and opened my Bible to the very beginning--Genesis. I read as far as the last verse of that first chapter. After reading that God had made everything "very good, I felt filled with joy. I saw that all that God created, includ ing me, was very good. Pain and discomfort are not good, therefore they are not made by God and are not real. The itching stopped and the rash quickly disappeared.

Mrs. Eddy writes in Science and Health: "The Bible contains the recipe for all healing. 'The leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations.' Sin and sickness are both healed by the same Principle. The tree is typical of man's divine Principle, which is equal to every emergency, offering full salvation from sin, sickness, and death.

Do you need inspiration or healing? Turn to the Bible. It has the answers and the comfort to meet your needs.