God causes healing

IN the Bible, God reveals that He is the Maker, the creator or cause, of all that was made, including man in His likeness; that He is Spirit and totally good; and that there is none else beside Him. Can anything cause an effect antithetical to Him who is All? Drawing a logical conclusion from the Scriptural revelation, the Christian Science textbook, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy,1 answers: ``There is but one primal cause. Therefore there can be no effect from any other cause, and there can be no reality in aught which does not proceed from this great and only cause.''2

God does not cause sin or suffering; He excludes evil by virtue of His allness and goodness. The deception of the physical senses would tempt us to believe that evil coexists with good. Although these senses claim to report genuine thoughts and feelings, and to be the very substance of our lives, they are not the source of truth. They can present only a false, limited sense of things.

Opposing the evidence of the physical senses through understanding the reality of God and expressing the purity and love inherent in our true nature as His man enables us to overcome sin and sickness. Christ Jesus proved this, instantly redeeming sinners and healing even those who were thought to be incurably ill.

The Science, or law, of Christ--Christian Science--helps us to think and live from the basis of perfect cause and perfect effect, perfect creator and perfect creation. In this way we're able to avail ourselves of the healing effects of divine Spirit, Love. Christian Science helped me when my husband and I moved from a state in the Sunbelt where we had made our home for many years to an area where the climate was cold and damp.

Our longtime friends warned us that the people in the new area were as unfriendly as the climate. But during the period following the move I was too busy to think much about friends or weather. Soon after we moved into our new home, however, I developed a heavy cold that settled into a persistent cough. This was not incapacitating, though at times it did affect my speech, and my usual gusto in hymn singing at church was reduced to a mouthing of the words.

Not until the day when I couldn't keep a business appointment because I couldn't talk at all did it dawn on me that the cough had been worsening for more than six months. Then I got concerned enough to ask a Christian Science practitioner for help through prayer.

Looking back, I'm surprised that I was so slow to claim my spiritual right to be healed, considering that I had experienced metaphysical healing many times. But that evening, when I finally set aside time to pray for myself, I came face to face with the realization that I had been taken in by a deception that change was causative.

Since this suggestion challenged my allegiance to God as the only cause, I began to deny it a place in my thought. I saw that in a very profound sense I was really not in new surroundings of climate and companionship. In truth, I was still in God's creation, where the atmosphere of divine good had to be the same everywhere, leaving no room for physical or mental coldness. And the very moment I realized that I needed to be firm about accepting no other cause but God, I was healed. It came to pass just as the Bible promises: ``Ye shall have a song, as in the night when a holy solemnity is kept.... And the Lord shall cause his glorious voice to be heard....''3

We are now enjoying our fifth year in our new home, and our neighbors and co-workers are among the friendliest I have ever known. The warmth and love around us are an abiding joy, just as they were in our former home.

Wherever we may be, whatever may seem to surround us, however difficult our situation, if it isn't good, it isn't of God, and so it can't endure. God is the constant cause of health, not of suffering. And when we have the song of spiritual understanding in our heart, the ring of divine conviction speaks through our life. Having one perfect cause, we can have only perfect effects.

1The Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science. 2Science and Health, p. 207. 3Isaiah 30:29, 30. You can find more articles like this one in the Christian Science Sentinel, a weekly magazine. 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