A Healing Response
I was about to take the phone off the hook! My son had sought professional help with a financial transaction, and had called me three times that day to share his frustration over the inability of the office staff to help him. He'd used adjectives like stupid and uncaring to describe them. In the last call, he proclaimed that he was going to take his business elsewhere. I figured it was very likely that the workers at that company wished he would!
Like Winnie the Pooh, I felt like saying, "Oh, bother!" Sometimes you can really feel caught in a cross-fire, caring about people's troubles on the one hand and not wanting them to vent their problems at you on the other. Not until shortly after the third call from my son did I wake up to the real reason behind those calls. They were calls for help-for a healing touch. My son knew that my husband and I go to God to find healing solutions to all our difficulties. Although he had rarely come right out and asked for help, I knew he expected that if we could do something, we would. (Isn't that what parents are for?)
This realization quieted my thought. I remembered the mental call for help Christ Jesus felt when someone reached out to touch him and was healed. Mark's Gospel says, "And a certain woman, which had an issue of blood twelve years, and had suffered many things of many physicians, and had spent all that she had, and was nothing bettered, but rather grew worse, when she had heard of Jesus, came in the press behind, and touched his garment. For she said, If I may touch but his clothes, I shall be whole. And straightway the fountain of her blood was dried up; and she felt in her body that she was healed of that plague" (5:25-29). Jesus had felt her touch, even though a crowd pressed around him. His spiritual intuition recognized her faith that she would be healed.
While it took the persistence of my son to rouse me, I did finally perceive his need. And I quietly prayed to realize what God knew was true about His creation, which of course includes my son. I knew that gaining the clear sense of each one of us as made perfect by God is what brings healing to discordant situations. We each have this spiritual sense. I reasoned that both my son and those office workers were in fact children of God, expressing God's love and unerring wisdom. I knew that despite appearances to the contrary, we each reflect the intelligence of the divine Mind that is God; there can be no miscommunication, lack of communication, or division in God. It is the nature of God's children to be loving and helpful.
Shortly after I finished this brief, heartfelt prayer, this reaching out to God to enlighten my own thought, the phone rang again. It was my son, who said he had felt impelled to call that office just once more. This time he had reached a woman who was instantly helpful and "really kind." She knew exactly what he needed and followed through. My son was happy and so was I. It was an example (albeit a small one) of the fact that no human circumstance is beyond harmonious resolution when we understand God's power.
Helping to solve the problems of society, which seem endless, requires much patience and compassion. Indifference just doesn't work. When people tell us of their griefs and sorrows, we can't afford, frankly, to be their dumping ground. Just letting another person unload his or her problems on you only reinforces the trouble. Then, instead of one upset person, there are two! The best response is the healing touch, proceeding out of a consideration of what God knows about His creation.
Referring to Jesus and the healing quoted above from the Bible, the founder of this newspaper wrote, "His quick apprehension of this mental call illustrated his spirituality" (Mary Baker Eddy, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 86). Jesus didn't just nod his head in sympathy and put his arm around a sufferer. He did more; he healed sorrows and restored health and life. He showed that God never created suffering or sorrow, and that each child of God, reflecting Him, is provably as harmonious as He is.
God gives us the ability to love and help one another. Through this ability we are capable of answering any call with a healing response.
