Spiritual Healing Is Effective
AS children, both my husband and I had diseases that were medically considered incurable. In each case, after we had taken up the serious study of Christian Science we were cured through prayer. It's no wonder that we rely on Christian Science treatment for our own children and have had many wonderful healings as a result. In my case, epilepsy was diagnosed as incurable. While the healing occurred many years ago, it didn't take place right away. I seemed to need those years of prayer to become comfortable with what I was learning in my study and practice of Christian Science.
Christian Science indeed changed my perspective on life and health. And healings of other illnesses as I prayed illustrated to me the mental causes of disease. I was seeing that healing involved the destruction of fear and the prayerful adjustment of mental or moral disturbances. These changes were based on a greater understanding of God, who is divine Love, and of myself as His spiritual image and likeness, as indicated in the Bible.
Especially important in this healing was the understanding that, as infinite Mind, God is the source of all true consciousness, including my own. This understanding of God's law overrides material theories about consciousness. Prayer awakens us to the consciousness of divine Love and its law of good to an ever greater degree. The opening of thought through prayer to God's, Love's, presence does, in fact, enable us to understand Him and His laws. Christ Jesus said, ``Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God'' (Matthew 5:8). This singleness of heart and mind that wants to understand God above all else certainly gets results.
As I learned more about Christian Science, I realized that just because we don't understand right now how a law works, doesn't mean it isn't operating. For example, many of us know only the most superficial explanation of how an aircraft gets off the ground. And yet we trust that the laws of aerodynamics are understandable and reliable. Otherwise we would never set foot on an aircraft.
I was willing to stick with the study of Christian Science in an effort to learn more about God's law and what it means in my own life. I wasn't disappointed. I began to see that not only is there a method of serious spiritual healing with systematic results-- Christian Science--but that I could learn to obey its rules and expect healing results. And when we begin to let the action of divine Love guide and control our thinking, there's an inevitable improvement in our health and circumstances.
This spiritualization of thought reveals to us more of our genuine nature as God's spiritual image and likeness, receiving and expressing harmony and wholeness from Him. The fact is that man is like God, reflecting His nature, because God, infinite good, couldn't make anything unlike Himself. This is a law of health, when understood and conformed to.
In the Preface to her book Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, the Discoverer of Christian Science, Mary Baker Eddy, states: ``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. Now, as then, these mighty works are not supernatural, but supremely natural'' (p. xi). This effective spiritual method of healing is available for everyone.
