It Never Strikes Once
A common expression says lightning never strikes twice in the same place. And if you've been stung by some blow of fate you'd rather not see repeated, you may take comfort in this as a truism. But there is a better way to seek - and find - immunity from repeated evils. It rests on a mental basis, in a confidence gained from understanding the power of God. First recognizing that we do have safety and security from God, we then can prove this true. This ultimately involves freedom not only from repeating bad situations but from experiencing them in the first place.
Confidence and trust in God were proved practical by Christ Jesus. He showed God is always here, offering us a sure way out of treading or retracing tragic footsteps. Anchored in the knowledge that God is infinite and invariably good, Jesus showed that complete trust in God is viable. His own confidence in the infinite control of Deity restored the sick to health, fed multitudes of people, and brought the dead back to life. But the power of God that Jesus demonstrated wasn't just for then. We can emulate Jesus' healing works now.
One remarkable thing about the healing that Jesus practiced was it resulted in the restoration of individuals to well-being. The fact is that when spiritual understanding destroys the lightning bolts of sickness, sin, lack, or friction in relationships, these are gone - first mentally, then physically - never to return.
Perhaps still more remarkable is to glimpse what undergirded Jesus' healing. It was an eternal truth: whatever is evil, whatever is sinful, whatever is unspiritual (mortal, material), is ultimately unreal. It is no part of God. It can never strike the son or daughter of God's creating. Not even once! You and I are, in reality, spiritual man, God's own image - and immune from trouble.
When this doesn't seem to be the case, and we are struggling in some way, we're seeing material illusion instead of spiritual fact. Healing comes through prayerful recognition that the evils we appear to be encountering are not truly delivering blows to our health or happiness, which are in God. God is in charge of His entire creation. He cannot, does not, allow evil to befall His children.
Christian Science, discovered in 1866 by Mary Baker Eddy, explains a spiritual basis for our refusing to accept that evil must repeat itself. This is applicable to national conflicts, too, even ancient ones. Many of today's tragic news items are about recurring hostilities between different peoples, such as those in Rwanda and Bosnia.
When confronted with persuasive evidence that there's a historical basis for conflict, we can support resolution and healing by thinking this through from a spiritual standpoint (that is, through praying). From the perspective of God's control, we see that chronic hostility between particular ethnic groups involves the present acceptance of the belief that God is absent (and consequently that good is absent). This belief admits a possible interruption of what is infinitely uninterruptible. We can pray to understand the falsity of this, through the acknowledgment that for God ever to be All-in-all, He must forever have been All-in-all, never absent.
This realization came to me one day while I was thinking about a massacre perpetrated earlier this century. The details disturbed me terribly, until I decided I needed to question the assumption that evil had ever truly interrupted God's absolute control of creation. Through prayer I gained a surprisingly profound sense of peace. I don't feel this was just a selfish, personal gain either. Since then I've felt more inclined to respond with love and compassion to world events. I've also been healed through the recognition that past disturbances I'd experienced were not God-created, not realities.
When 70 followers of Jesus' reported to him the power of the healings they had brought about through what he taught them, he commended them by declaring, "I beheld Satan as lightning fall from heaven" (Luke 10:18). Like lightning disappearing quickly into the darkness, evil had vanished at their understanding of God's goodness.
We can approach evil on the same basis that Jesus did, and see it "as lightning fall from heaven." We can see evil progressively vanish from our lives.
