Defeating pain

Pain can be met and mastered through a deeper understanding of God's will. His will is love, health, harmony, beauty. Pain is not caused or sanctioned by any law of God's, and it is defeated by yielding to His healing presence.

Life and health are the realities of man's being. Pain, on the other hand, is a phenomenon of the material senses. To the human being struggling with pain , these senses may seem to embrace most of his being, to be able to drown out h is sense of God's saving power. But, as Elijah discovered, reality, the presence of God, is not to be found in the uproar presented by the physical senses -- the wind, earthquake, or fire-- but in a still small voice, heard only by our God-given spiritual sense. n1

n1 See I Kings 19:11, 12.

Speaking of this "still small voice," Mary Baker Eddy n2 writes: "The inaudible voice of Truth is, to the human mind, 'as when a lion roareth.' It is heard in the desert and in dark places of fear." n3

n2 Mrs. Eddy is the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science.

n3 Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures,m p. 559.

The material senses give an inadequate, in fact, a totally wrong view of existence, as different from the true view as earthquake, wind, and fire are from the still, small voice. God is divine Life, Love. His light of wholeness shines on His creation without exception. When we gain, through spiritual sense , just a glimpse of the eternal fact of God's will of perfection, and see its application to our own being, the material senses find the evidence of disorder -- which seemed so real -- receding, until it disappears altogether. We are healed.

To material sense, pain is the result of a conflict between opposing activities or substances. One collides, interferes, reacts with the other; and the resultant stress, tension, heat, or excitement is presented to us as pain. But reality, that which only God made, is not in the pain or in the material conditions that seem to cause it. Reality is in infinite Spirit, God, the only substance there is; and in that single infinite substance, that one infinite intelligence, there is no possibility of conflict. Man is God's likeness and is as purely spiritual, infinite -- and therefore unlimited -- as his creator. The only real condition of man in God's kingdom is absolute harmony, a painless harmony that can be realized and experienced right here, right now.

"The kingdom of God is within you," n4 said Christ Jesus, and Mrs. Eddy explains: "This kingdom of God 'is within you,' -- is within reach of man's consciousness here, and the spiritual idea reveals it." n5

n4 Luke 17:21.

n5 Science and Health,m p. 576.

Pain and disease are contrary to God's will; they are false arguments, based on the material senses' erroneous view of a topsy-turvy creation, that man is separated from God's kingdom -- and from God Himself. But we're not, and never can be. Know this, and cling to it. Painless harmony is within reach. DAILY BIBLE VERSE Hold not thy peace, and be not still, O God. For, lo, thine enemies make a tumult . . . . Let them be confounded and troubled for ever; yea, let them be put to shame, and perish. Psalms 83:1, 2, 17