A healing kind of light
One morning I woke up in a foreign city. I had the flu and was feeling almost suffocated.
At once, I turned to the most dependable method of healing that I know: spiritual healing. Healing through prayer alone. The healing that was practiced by Christ Jesus.
The founder of this newspaper, whose name was Mary Baker Eddy, wrote about Christian healing in her major work, and sometimes spoke of it in terms of light: "Truth destroys falsity and error, for light and darkness cannot dwell together. Light extinguishes the darkness, and the Scripture declares that there is 'no night there' " ("Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," pgs. 474-475). Jesus showed sickness to be false and erroneous by healing it.
So what is that light? It is really an understanding of God. Or, you could say, spiritual understanding. The same understanding that enabled Jesus to heal.
That morning when I felt so sick, I called a Christian Scientist who was in that city. I asked her to pray for me. On hearing my barely audible voice, she realized my problem at once. And she simply said to me, "Your whole being is filled with light."
When I hung up only a minute or so later, I was free of every symptom I'd been suffering from. Completely free. And I stayed free. What's more, in the 26 years that have followed, I have never again suffered from that type of sickness.
So what was it that happened in this case? There was a powerful, timeless, healing truth behind the words of that woman - spiritual understanding. It acted like a light turned on in a dark room.
The darkness isn't "something" that stands there and fights against the light. Darkness does not gather together in a corner for a last-stand battle with the light. In a room where the light has just been switched on, the darkness just vanishes. The light effortlessly shows itself to be the thing with power and substance. And at the same time, it shows the darkness to lack power and substance. Darkness is a void - the absence of light. Spiritually speaking, evil is a void - the absence of an understanding of God.
What that woman's words referred to was not solar light but spiritual light. The light that Christ identified himself with in these words: "I am the light of the world: he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life" (John 8:12).
Jesus heard God's messages. And in my own case, I perceived in an instant something of the presence and power of God's message. It was a spiritual illumination, a glimpse of the fact that God made me perfect, then and forever. What I perceived brought the light of healing to my body instantaneously.
According to Science and Health, "Christ is the true idea voicing good, the divine message from God to men speaking to the human consciousness" (pg. 332). Christ really is the glory of God; "the light of the world"; that "true Light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world" (John 1:9). This is why God's message to us will forever save and redeem us. It has the power to purify, regenerate, heal, and save in all ages. A power so brilliant that the darkness of sin, disease, and even death - of all mortality - cannot withstand its presence.
Imagine what would happen in individual lives - and to collective society - if every time, when we each were tempted to think or say something not loving, to do something wrong, to feel sick, unworthy, or less than perfect, we stopped for an instant and understood a spiritual fact - that because God is omnipotent, "My whole being is filled with light!" If each time we saw a sister or brother in difficulty, we stopped and realized s/he is filled with this light as well, the world would find itself being transformed.
The light of God's good message is already within you and around you, to illumine your path step by step and to light your life. This is where to find healing.
You can visit the home page of The First Church of Christ, Scientist: www.tfccs.com
