Profoundly Simple Health Care

I ARRIVED at a hospital to visit a friend. For a little while I wandered around the large grounds that the institution occupied and among the buildings sprawled out around me. I read the names of the many different departments until I finally located the one that housed my friend. I marveled at the size and complexity of this health-care institution.

Then I realized that, by contrast, I had grown quite used to turning to a much simpler way of caring for my own health. At that very moment, in fact, I was carrying all I needed with me in my briefcase. It is contained in two books.

The books are the Bible, and Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, Mary Baker Eddy. Christian Science is a spiritual revelation, and the regeneration it demands brings health to those who study its teachings. This is because Christian Science shows us that the healing and protective power of God proved by Christ Jesus almost two thousand years ago is a currently accessible resource for health, as well as for salvation from sin.

Regaining or maintaining physical and moral well-being starts with the prayerful recognition that in reality man is healthy always, because his real being is the spiritual child of God--God's very image and likeness. God being flawlessly perfect, His image exemplifies this perfection. Spiritual man, our true being, never in reality needs to be healed. Mrs. Eddy points out in Science and Health, ``It is our ignorance of God, the divine Principle, which produces apparent discord, and the right understanding of Him restores harmony'' (p. 390).

Yet we know that our human lives do demand healing! Identifying ``our ignorance of God''--rather than material cause or effect--as what needs correcting is a vital steppingstone to gaining ``the right understanding of Him'' required to solve our difficulties. This right understanding of Him is what God gives us in answer to our prayers, in order that we may be freed from physical and moral ills. Moreover, prayerfully yielding thought to the reality of existence is the most economical as well as the most effective health-care system. It does, however, cost us the willingness to shed whatever wrong thinking or behavior--such as fear, hatred, lust, or ignorance--our prayers uncover as needing to be put behind us for our healing.

The curative effect of such a change of thought is illustrated in Bible stories such as the healing of Naaman, related in Second Kings. Naaman recovered from leprosy when he was obedient to the prophet Elisha's instruction to him to wash in the river Jordan. This request represented a demand for the Syrian captain's humility; he had expected a more dramatic scene. Yet when he found the willingness to drop his false pride and act on the demand for humility, his health was restored, or, as the Bible puts it ``he was clean'' (5:14).

Prayerful study of two books may seem far too simple to bring physical and moral regeneration. Yet the Bible and Science and Health reveal the infinite truth of God and man. When we respond to their profound spiritual demand on us, they enable us to dig deeper than superficial, material conditions, to discover and address the mental causes of physical troubles. And the spiritual facts in these books empower us to bring our thoughts and lives into harmony with God, in order to eradicate the belief in materiality that is the cause of all sickness, disease, and sin.

These books will fit into your bag too! If you prayerfully study and implement their teachings, you can also enjoy the life-changing benefits of the Christly cure and care that these books freely reveal. BIBLE VERSE

My help cometh from the Lord, which made heaven and earth. Psalms 121:2