We're Not Enemies
A COOL breeze just begged us to take a few minutes and play. Three children and I headed for the playground. We laughed together and raced to the jungle gym.
Full of sport, I began to scale a wall, using the rope that was provided. As I reached the top, I placed my hand on the wall in order to pull myself up, but found myself yelling out in pain. I looked up, thinking that perhaps I had impaled my hand on a nail; but I saw instead three bees buzzing about the area.
The children came running to see that I was all right. Simply and quickly, I explained what had happened and told them I just needed a few minutes to be quiet and pray. I assured them that I was fine, and that we could expect healing. They easily accepted that, knowing this is the normal procedure for me, and went off again to play.
In my own childhood, a bee sting had required certain lotions and an amount of time to heal. Since I have become a student of Christian Science, however, I have found that no such process is needed. Rather, a simple, prayer-filled understanding of the nature of God and man is a more effective help in sickness than anything I have ever experienced.
Sitting on the tire swing, where I could see the children, but on the quiet side of the playground, I reached out to God in prayer. I simply affirmed what I know to be the truth--that all true being is created by God, good, and is wholly spiritual because the creator is divine Spirit; that God is very present now to govern His creation; that our recognition of God's government keeps us from hurting one another or feeling that we have been hurt.
I thought of that passage in the Old Testament of the Bible where traditional enemies in the animal kingdom are pictured dwelling together in peace. It's in Isaiah: ``The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; and a little child shall lead them'' (11:6). It was obvious to me that God, divine Love, did not create us to be enemies of one another in any manner whatsoever. I was not at war with the little bees, nor were they at war with me.
Because this government of God is right now in place and effective, we don't need to be impressed by aggression. Such behavior has no basis in spiritual reality, so we just don't need to fear it or react negatively to it. On those grounds I could see that the sting of that bee didn't need to cause a reaction in me-- not mentally in the form of fear or anger, and not physically in the form of pain, itching, or swelling. When we recognize how safe we truly are as God's spiritual offspring, in the care of God, divine Love, it isn't at all difficult to be forgiving of little injustices, or even of big ones.
The happy sounds of the playground reached me, and I realized that the pain was completely gone. I had been no more than a couple of minutes sitting on the tire swing. Joyfully, I joined the children again in play.
In the Preface to her book Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, begins to speak of this method of healing that is fully explained in the rest of the book. She states, ``The physical healing of Christian Science results now, as in Jesus' time, from the operation of divine Principle, before which sin and disease lose their reality in human consciousness and disappear as naturally and as necessarily as darkness gives place to light and sin to reformation'' (p. xi). The natural law of God, good, is forever at work, revealing the harmony of true being.
