Our steady source of health

When I was a small child, I toppled headfirst out of a parked car, cutting one ear severely on the jagged roadside. My mother immediately turned to God in prayer. She had learned that God is the true Father-Mother of everyone and that He is Love, as the Bible states. By actively trusting my well-being to God, all-powerful good, she was actually calling upon the most consistent, ever-present help possible. She was looking to ''the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.'' n1

n1 James 1:17.

A Christian Science practitioner was asked to pray for me, to work with the Biblical truths that reveal man's God-given safety and wholeness. Within a short time I was completely free of pain and distress. My mother kept the ear clean but did not anxiously inspect it or speculate as to whether it would heal without stitches.

It did heal, perfectly. The active understanding that I was safe in God's embrace, never for a moment out of His watchful care, erased all traces of the accident.

The Bible implies that God is Principle, the one supreme lawmaker. God's creation, then, is based on law, a law of harmony that each one of us can understand and prove. Since God is Love, this law operates for the good of us all, as Christ Jesus illustrated in destroying the mental and physical ills of multitudes. Our Master showed that all types of troubles can be met successfully through reliance on God alone. God's law is uninfluenced by human opinion. To embrace this law in our hearts and learn to prove it in our daily lives is deeply rewarding.

There is no Scriptural authority for thinking that God is capable of healing some difficulties but not others. The Bible illustrates that He heals the sick as well as the sinner, and this divine law is practical today.

We can wisely rely on God when our trust is established on an understanding of Him, which surpasses even the noble qualities of hope and faith. Our Father, with whom is no ''shadow of turning,'' is reliable, consistent, all-powerful. So His laws of health and stability are established, and it is our acceptance of, or resistance to, these eternal laws that determines their effect in our experience.

God, ever-present good, is not the source of an opposite, evil, any more than light is the originator of darkness. By listening in prayer to what God is telling us of the health and joy that belong to His children, and by identifying ourselves as His children, we realize in our own natures more of the consistency and stability that characterize our Father's nature. Changing human perspectives and material remedies cannot supply us with the steady health and serenity we seek; but our eternal Principle, the loving Father, does.

Mary Baker Eddy, a thorough Bible student and the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, writes in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures: ''The divine Principle of healing is proved in the personal experience of any sincere seeker of Truth. Its purpose is good, and its practice is safer and more potent than that of any other sanitary method.'' n2

n2 Science and Health, p.x.

Everyone is, in reality, the child of God, divine Principle, inheriting all of His good qualities and expressing them in individual health and joy. The impartial law of Love, understood, works for all races, ages, nationalities. It heals and sustains all who hunger after proof that ''God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.'' n3

n3 Psalms 46:1.

DAILY BIBLE VERSE Why art thou cast down, O my soul? and why art thou disquieted within me? hope thou in God: for I shall yet praise him, who is the health of my countenance, and my God. Psalms 42:11