The healing sunlight of Truth

Since my friend couldn't go with me to the stadium, he was listening to the baseball game on the radio. Things weren't going well for our team, and there were disappointed groans from the fans. Then what my friend heard mystified him: a surge of cheering. Later I explained to him that in the midst of that cold and gray day the thick clouds suddenly parted, and the stadium was flooded with warmth and light. Over twenty thousand people spontaneously jumped up and cheered the sun! How naturally the sun broke through, and what an effect it had. I remember that experience when I'm tempted to feel trapped by some dark circumstance. Then the need is for spiritual light and for the peace and health it brings. And it's natural to have these in our lives because their source, God, is always present. The Psalmist sang, ``The Lord is my light and my salvation.''1

A number of years ago, a lump developed in one breast. As a Christian Scientist, I felt convinced that I could trust God with my health. As a mother, I had certainly had many proofs of the healing power of God, divine Truth and Love, for myself and my children.

For a while my study of the Bible and the Christian Science textbook, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy,2 centered on the effort to rid myself of worrisome images of thought. I found this passage in the textbook: ``Christian Science brings to the body the sunlight of Truth, which invigorates and purifies. Christian Science acts as an alterative, neutralizing error with Truth. It changes the secretions, expels humors, dissolves tumors, relaxes rigid muscles, restores carious bones to soundness. The effect of this Science is to stir the human mind to a change of base, on which it may yield to the harmony of the divine Mind.'' 3

I began to recognize that Christian Science wasn't just teaching me to exchange diseased thoughts for healthy thoughts. It was stirring me to a whole different base of thinking -- to a spiritually based view of man. Christian Science was developing in me a deeper understanding of what God knows about His own perfect creation.

As I continued to study, the fears of disease began to melt away, and a sense of well-being and trust in God's goodness enveloped me. Instead of checking the condition, I felt confident that the naturalness of spiritual truth would take care of everything. This doesn't mean I didn't do anything! The challenge impelled me to deeper and more consecrated prayer and study, and to grow in my living of such Christly qualities as gentleness, courage, and unselfishness.

Not blind faith but intelligent spiritual reasoning progressively brightened my outlook. Some months later I noticed the lump had disappeared, and no symptom of it ever returned.

Mrs. Eddy explains, ``The physical healing of Christian Science results now, as in Jesus' time, from the operation of divine Principle, before which sin and disease lose their reality in human consciousness and disappear as naturally and as necessarily as darkness gives place to light and sin to reformation.'' 4

Christian Science has shown me that turning to God for healing is as natural as moving into the sunshine. And the healing experiences of thousands of others prove that this healing light of Truth is universally available. That's reason for cheering! 1 Psalms 27:1. 2 The Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science. 3 Science and Health, p. 162. 4 Ibid., p. xi.