Sudden healing takes time

Jesus healed quickly; for the most part, instantaneously. He said to the lepser, "Be thou clean." n1 The change was sudden.

n1 Matthew 8:3.

But Jesus took whatever time he needed to prepare himself to do the sudden work. He prayed often, spiritually purifying his thought in communion with God. Sometimes this prayer lasted the whole night long. The Bible even tells us that just prior to overcoming the temptations of the devil at the start of his ministry, he spent 40 days and 40 nights alone with God in prayer.

Sincere Christians today, though they may not match the Master's total record , nevertheless can heal discord and sickness through the christ-power, sometimes as suddenly as did Jesus. But it is a capability that comes only as a student prayerfully apprehends and brings out in his or her life man's relationship to God.

This necessary preparation for healing involves a kind of prayer that is more than genuflecting or a clasping together of palms, though neither is taboo. It requires a spiritual communion with the omnipotent God, an affirming of man's coexistence with Him as His perfect idea, and a willingness and aptitude on our part to put into practice such attributes of God as integrity, mercy, and goodness.

Devout prayer and Christian practice often require more of mortals then they are willing to do, eigther because routine tasks interfere, because a balky unwillingness to learn raises its foolish head, or because peer views or current customs don't include such activity. This is why sudden healing often takes time. (People havem had instant healings when first exposed to the deep meaning of Christianity as brought out in Christian Science, but they find that they have to grow in Science to keep healthy and to heal others.) These hurdles of routine tasks, unwillingness to learn, and popular customs need to be cleared and Christly living undertaken if there is to be that recognition of Truth that prepares the mental soil for sudden healing.

Mary Baker Eddy, n2 the most successfull healer of this age, has much to say about how to heal quickly. For instance, she explains, "Whoever reaches the understanding of Christian Science in its proper signification will perform the sudden curesof which is capable; but this can be done only by taking up the cross and following Christ in the daily life." n3

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

n3 Science and Health with key to the Scriptures,m pp. 178-179.

Practicing as much of a Christly regimen as I seemed able to do, I once experienced such a sudden cure. While I waited in the car for my wife one evening, with our less-than-a-year-old son lying feverish on my lap, I was wishing she would hurry so I could get on home with the baby where I planned to turn in healing prayer to God for divine aid.

Suddenly the thought came that i needn't wait to get home, that I already had spent days and nights there before in communion with God, and that God was just as present in the car. So I closed my eyes and began to know the perfection and power of God and the baby's coexistence with Him right then. After onely seconds the boy sat bolt upright, crawled across the seat, pulled himself up to the open window, and began jabbering away at the world. Completely healed, he played the rest of the evening, something he had not done for a while.

Healing is like a sliver of the moon. It's the part seen. It is supported by a great body of unseen or secret prayer -- prayer through which one searches for the spiritual understanding of how to fight the battle between health and sickness, good and evil, Spirit and matter. Jesus advised his followers, "When thou prayest, enter into they closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly." n4

n4 Matthew 6:6.

Learning to do ths prayerful closet work brought the comment from one student that although he had realized the Science of Christianity required growth and understanding -- "line upon line, line upon line" -- what no one had told him was that there would be so many lines.

But that's the road to sudden healing.

DAILY BIBLE VERSE Then said Jesus . . . , If ye continue in my word, then are ye my diciples indeed; and ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free. John 8:31, 32