What I Saw

THE woman told of having suffered from a great deal of back pain for several days. Finally a severe headache added to the difficulty and she retired to her room to pray, for she was unable to take part in the family activities. She said she found herself simply thinking of God.

She pondered each of the synonyms for God--Principle, Mind, Soul, Spirit, Life, Truth, Love-- that Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, uses to describe God's nature. As the woman prayed in this way, she became totally impressed with God's allness. She caught a glimpse of being as entirely in God, as spiritual, perfect, and immortal.

In a little while her husband came to ask if there was anything he could do for her. She sat up and found that the pain was completely gone. She said to him, ``You can't believe what I just saw!''

Of course he did believe it. And I believed it too, for I've seen much the same thing when I've been healed through prayer. It was what many have seen when they have experienced spiritual healing. It is a glimpse, in some degree, of what God, the all-seeing, all-knowing Mind, is beholding of His own spiritual creation, man. John caught a glorious view of spiritual being on the Isle of Patmos. In Revelation he described ``a new heaven and a new earth,'' saying, ``There shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain'' (21:1, 4).

Often these spiritual insights come when we are driven by adversity to turn completely from a finite perception of life as material and find God, good, as Life. Christ Jesus, in the garden of Gethsemane before the crucifixion, showed us the transforming effects of understanding that God is, in fact, divine Life. In those hours of darkness and agony, Jesus yielded everything, even his life, to his obedience to God, saying, Luke's Gospel records, ``Not my will, but thine, be done'' (22:42). It was this prayerful yielding that enabled him to crown the crucifixion with his resurrection and ascension.

In great adversity Mrs. Eddy caught a revelation of God that transformed her consciousness and healed her of the nearly fatal effects of a serious accident. She asked for her Bible and, as Robert Peel describes it in Mary Baker Eddy: The Years of Discovery: ``. . . she was filled with the conviction that her life was in God--that God was the only Life, the only I am.'' He adds in the next paragraph: ``There was no room for fear or pain or death, no room for the limits that men define as matter'' (p. 197). She was healed.

Mrs. Eddy was later to write in her book Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures: ``Become conscious for a single moment that Life and intelligence are purely spiritual,--neither in nor of matter,--and the body will then utter no complaints. If suffering from a belief in sickness, you will find yourself suddenly well'' (p. 14).

I have repeatedly seen this healing result in my own experience when I have become conscious, even for a moment, of the totality of spiritual being in God. It has felt for that moment as though I were standing with God, at one with Mind, and feeling myself as the very thought of God. I have often felt tears of indescribable joy well up in me, so glorious is the view. I too have felt like running to share with others ``what I have seen.''

One such time occurred recently when our young daughter came down to our room about midnight. She was feverish and coughing. I tucked her comfortably into our bed, and stayed awake myself to pray. At first, this was more a dutiful response than an inspired one. My eyes were drooping with sleep. But I persevered, knowing that both this lethargy and our daughter's illness were nothing in the face of God's allness. I needed to be willing to let God show me His view of being. As I sat quietly, the thought came to me, ``This child was never born into matter.'' Suddenly I caught a realization of her unity with God, whole, spiritual, immortal--not as a small female child that I had given birth to, but as a radiant, wholly spiritual expression of immortal Love. In fact, I saw our whole family there, directly related to God alone and therefore free of mortal limitations of disease and frailty.

Then, I curled up on the daybed in my office and went to sleep, utterly certain that all was well. In the morning our daughter bounded in to wake me, already dressed in her school clothes. She was ready for another day of kindergarten and completely free of the physical discomfort of the night before.

You can believe what I saw--what countless others have seen! It's there for each one of us. No matter how great the need, we can yield quickly and completely to God's total care and love. God is ever available and through all ages has brought light and healing to all who turn to Him. You can believe what God shows you, and be healed!

BIBLE VERSE

Then said Jesus

to those Jews which believed on him,

If ye continue in my word,

then are ye my disciples indeed;

and ye shall know the truth,

and the truth

shall make you free.

John 8:31, 32