Stopping sickness in its tracks
The question “What would Jesus do?” continues to challenge people to examine their behavior, to reshape their lives in accord with Jesus’ model. This question isn’t often applied to healing sickness, though it can and should be – because what Jesus did when confronted with sickness was to heal it.
Jesus’ healings were so consistent and well known that crowds followed him, bringing family members and friends burdened with a whole spectrum of maladies. Along with his healing work, he taught his listeners about God. In fact, his healing and teaching were inseparable; the Word of God brought about cures, and the cures proved the power of the Word.
Jesus left a clear promise to his followers in every age: “He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do; because I go unto my Father”
(John 14:12). Christian healing continued for a time after Jesus’ ministry, and was then found again centuries later in 1866, when Mary Baker Eddy discovered the “how” of Jesus’ works.
A severe injury moved her to ponder wholeheartedly one of Jesus’ healings, and she found herself suddenly cured. That landmark healing raised deep questions in her heart and led to years of searching the Scriptures. The outcome: a soundly reasoned and well-articulated statement of universal truths about God and His creation, in the form of the book “Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures.”
For my family and countless others, the study of the spiritual truths in this book has made it normal to expect and experience healing. The weekly and monthly magazines, the Christian Science Sentinel and The Christian Science Journal, include accounts of healings of all kinds.
When I was growing up, I became ill with flu symptoms one night. My loving parents were always ready to help me when I wasn’t feeling well. But I’d witnessed a lot of healings, including quite a few of my own, and had been learning how to pray for myself in Sunday School. So this time, I felt entirely comfortable turning directly to God in prayer.
I remember I started to think about how pure God is – pure Love, pure Life, pure Spirit. This led me to consider my own purity as God’s image – a definitive point from the first chapter of Genesis. Godlikeness, it occurred to me, was a complete and exclusive description of my spiritual substance, my true being. As this truth swept through my consciousness, the flu symptoms left. Right then, for good.
In the face of any threat to health, a proven system of spiritual healing is available to everyone. Science and Health explains: “Divine metaphysics is now reduced to a system, to a form comprehensible by and adapted to the thought of the age in which we live. This system enables the learner to demonstrate the divine Principle, upon which Jesus’ healing was based, and the sacred rules for its present application to the cure of disease” (Science and Health, pp. 146–147).
Healing is what Jesus did – and what he would do now. It’s the model he left us, the means of stopping sickness decisively and finally. And Science and Health will help anyone put his healing lessons into practice.
