Working the Crowd
TODAY I attended a political rally in support of the presidential candidate of my choice. After his speech, he ``worked the crowd," shaking hands, greeting his supporters. I felt a rush of excitement as he approached my area, and then a surge of disappointment as he moved away.
After we cheered him on as his car drove by, I went back to the local Christian Science Reading Room. I had been spending the day there. As I entered, I felt the joy and peace I had experienced there earlier while reading articles in the Christian Science publications. I realized that both of my experiences that day involved responding to words and ideas. But there was something radically different between the political concepts and the spiritual ideas I was studying.
The topics were similar--health care, the economy, the environment, peace. But the articles I had been reading, which were based on the spiritual truths of the Bible, had presented each of those issues in the light of the healing Christ, the true idea of God. Not as hoped-for possibilities that might or might not occur depending on circumstances, but as divine ideas, created and forever maintained in perfect harmony by our Father-Mother God, the one Mind.
Jesus taught that the harmony and goodness of God are ever at hand, and he demonstrated the healing power of Christ. The Gospel of Luke in the Bible records that one day ``as he went the people thronged him. And a woman having an issue of blood twelve years . . . came behind him, and touched the border of his garment: and immediately her issue of blood stanched." Jesus stopped and said, ``Who touched me?" Even his faithful disciples, looking around at the crowd pressing in on them, didn't understand his question. Lots of people were touching him!
But Jesus persisted, and the woman did come forward. ``Daughter," he said, ``be of good comfort: thy faith hath made thee whole; go in peace." The healing Christ met the needs of this woman and, undoubtedly, of others in the crowd.
I thought of how the articles I'd read that day ``work the crowd," so to speak. They present the spiritual truths of being--as explained in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy. They touch the hearts and minds of the readers or listeners with the love of God, and healing follows. Carefully recorded examples of crime prevented, unhappy relationships renewed, diseases permanently healed, attest to the power of God. This divine help is available to each of us as we touch, not the
hands of some respected man or woman, but ``the border of [Christ's] garment." Through prayer, we glimpse that active Love and indefatigable Truth are with us, right now. This is not because we are somehow more worthy than others or favored by God. Rather, all can experience and express Love and Truth because man is, in his true nature, God's image and likeness. Man is spiritual and actually reflects all good. A recognition of this fact brings healing and progress.
Mrs. Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, puts it this way in Science and Health: ``Spiritual causation is the one question to be considered, for more than all others spiritual causation relates to human progress. The age seems ready to approach this subject, to ponder somewhat the supremacy of Spirit, and at least to touch the hem of Truth's garment."
The next time you're in a crowd, or in a quiet room alone with your thoughts, think about what you're reaching for. Think about the healing presence of the Christ. And know that right there, forever, you are God's loved child, spiritual and whole. And then ``go in peace."
