Dear God, please heal me!

MANY people utter this plea. In Bible times Jeremiah confidently petitioned God, ``Heal me, O Lord, and I shall be healed; save me, and I shall be saved.'' 1 God is not far off. He is as close as our thoughts. Many are healed by God. I myself was recently healed of a painful leg injury. As I quietly turned to God in prayer, something in the leg moved, the pain left, and I could again walk to my fifth-floor office.

The thought that came to me as I prayed was that the injury had never actually happened. This concept may seem astonishing to some, puzzling to others. But that holy conviction--that accidents cannot take place in the sight of God--is possible to all who sincerely study Christian Science.

This theology isn't some kind of escapism or wishful thinking. On the contrary, it meekly follows the teachings of Christ Jesus in spirit and letter. It unfolds the absolute truth that God is infinite good and that man is God's perfect offspring. The man God makes is not sick, not a sinner, not afraid. He is never injured. Man is the reflection, or expression, of all the good that God is. This man is our actual selfhood, totally spiritual. To deny through prayer that an injury took place is not to ignore it but to forward healing through a realization of our true, spiritual status.

To accept the absolute truth with even a grain of humble understanding can bring healing. The Christian Science textbook, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, gives tender hope to every sufferer. In it, Mary Baker Eddy2 states: ``Become conscious for a single moment that Life and intelligence are purely spiritual,--neither in nor of matter,--and the body will then utter no complaints. If suffering from a belief in sickness, you will find yourself suddenly well.'' 3

Many are made suddenly well today as they were in Jesus' day. God is the helper of all mankind. All of us are beloved.

It is right that we ask God to help us--not in the sense of pleading with Him but of acknowledging that He can help. The request makes us meek enough to allow false beliefs about God and man to begin dissolving. It opens the way for eternal truth to unfold in our thought. If that truth departs radically from what we had been believing, we don't mind, for we are becoming willing to leave those beliefs.

If we are not suddenly well, we need not question God. Healing is inevitable. Perhaps we need to ponder the spiritual meaning of the Bible more deeply, and accept even more completely the saving Christ.

God's healing power is not mysterious. It is not capricious, nor does it favor some over others. It is not emotional. It comes through receptivity to the Christ, the divine influence speaking to human consciousness and revealing God's eternal truth. Christ rouses our thought and expels the beliefs that cause woe. One result may be that we know we are healed even before the body confirms that fact. We feel the mental stirring of spiritual awakening, and the body is healed as a result of that awakening.

Just as we all can wake from a dream, so through Christ we all can wake from the nightmare of suffering. It isn't real because God never made it. His man is perfect. In reality we are this man.

Our adored, heavenly God does heal.

1 Jeremiah 17:14. 2 The Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science. 3 Science and Health, p. 14. DAILY BIBLE VERSE Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits: who forgiveth all thine iniquities; who healeth all thy diseases. Psalms 103:2, 3