Is there still hope?

THERE are many men, women, and children who are being healed today by the power of God and His Christ. These healings verify the Bible promise, ``Blessed is the man that trusteth in the Lord, and whose hope the Lord is.''1 The reason a Christian Scientist has great hope in God's healing power is that his trust is based on something more than unquestioning faith. The spiritual healing that comes through Christian Science is based on an understanding of God. Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy2 says, ``To understand God strengthens hope, enthrones faith in Truth, and verifies Jesus' word: `Lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world.'''3

Through the study and practice of Christian Science one can actually come to see that God, good, is the divine Principle of man; that God is infinite Love, divine Spirit, as the Bible teaches. And because He is Spirit -- not matter -- man, His creation, must be spiritual. The more we learn of God as Spirit the more we come to understand that man, God's expression, is not material but idea, the spiritual image of God, forever held in the creator's unchanging wholeness.

Such reasoning enables us to begin to comprehend the spiritual cause that underlies and sustains man's life. There's infinitely more to man than what appears to the five material senses because man's creator is divine Spirit. A superficial view of identity, then, isn't really giving us the true picture. Our prayers in Christian Science are to discern man's wholly God-derived identity. Such prayer reveals man's relationship to God as that of a wholly good child to a wholly good Father. Goodness and spiritual wholeness undergird our true identity as the perfect expression of a perfect God.

Admittedly, it sometimes seems difficult to accept these facts when the physical evidence seems so contrary to them. But isn't that largely because we're so accustomed to thinking of man as a physical being with a physical illness that needs a material remedy? The hope Christian Science offers, however, is based on a transformation of thought and life -- on learning to understand ourselves and others in an entirely different way. We gradually realize that the belief that we're a sick, unhappy mortal is not the solid, indisputable reality it may appear to be. And even the slightest letting go of that misconception lifts our thoughts higher. Then physical healing follows quite naturally, because we have perceived in some degree man's basic perfection as God's likeness.

The wonderful healing that comes with an increased understanding of God is never an intellectual exercise, however. It comes from a deep, Christly communing with God, a turning to Him with all our hearts with a prayerful desire to love Him more and feel His redeeming presence. To seek healing in Christian Science is an opportunity to know a joyous and inseparable intimacy with our Father-Mother God, the same Father that Christ Jesus so fully loved and trusted.

So even if you feel that there is no further hope, there is still hope in what a clear understanding of God has to offer. As the Bible says, referring to God, ``He sent his word, and healed them, and delivered them from their destructions.''4 Do have hope then. So many people are finding that God, omnipresent Love, does indeed heal.

1Jeremiah 17:7. 2The Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science. 3Science and Health, p. 446. 4Psalms 107:20.

You can find more articles like this one in the Christian Science Sentinel, a weekly magazine. 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