Good we don’t need to wait for
It was the week after Halloween. A winner in the U.S. presidential election had yet to be called. Further restrictions due to rising cases of COVID-19 were looming. The world felt encased in a state of solemn limbo.
As I was driving in my neighborhood, feeling the weight of that mental climate, I saw something that made me chuckle for a moment and say, “Well doesn’t that just convey the mood perfectly?” It was a humongous blow-up snowman. “We all just want to skip over this uncertainty and unpleasantness and get to Christmas already,” I thought.
A popular tradition during the season of Advent between Thanksgiving and Christmas is to light candles symbolizing the presence of joy and peace leading up to the celebration of the birth of Jesus. Christian Science has helped me see that Christly joy and peace are actually always present. No matter what we’re waiting for – better health, more harmony, fuller happiness – the Christ message of God’s love for all is always here to strengthen us and help us find freedom, right now. There is no situation beyond God’s control.
Mary Baker Eddy, who discovered Christian Science, writes in her book “Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures”: “Throughout all generations both before and after the Christian era, the Christ, as the spiritual idea, – the reflection of God, – has come with some measure of power and grace to all prepared to receive Christ, Truth” (p. 333). Through prayer, we learn to trust in that constant Christly presence and find that this brings expedient help when needed.
At the end of a semester in college, shortly before I was to go home for Christmas break, I became unwell and could barely speak. This was especially problematic given that my final project for a theater class involved singing a song.
Feeling an urgent need for my health to be restored, I contacted a Christian Science practitioner for help. She assured me that as the expression, or spiritual offspring, of God, I was naturally free from pressure. God’s peace and love are expressed in us at each moment. Together we broke down the word “expression.” One of the Latin definitions of “ex” is out of or from, so I thought of myself as naturally out of a state of being “pressed.” While this may not be quite in line with the literal meaning of the word “express,” it helped me glimpse something about my true, spiritual nature that I found so comforting. It’s a concept I’ve returned to and shared many times.
To me, that was the Christ giving me just the inspiration I needed to better understand my nature as a daughter of God. And by the day of the final, I was not only able to sing the song successfully, but I did so with a more advanced tone than I’d produced before and with an unexpected new dimension of vocal freedom. Shortly afterward I was completely well and fully able to make the trip home as planned.
Amid the fun of inflatable snowmen and Christmas movies, it’s comforting to know that whatever is going on in the world, the healing Christ is always with us. Rather than feeling as if we must wait for some future date to find resolution or healing, we can follow this advice from Jesus as interpreted in “The Message”: “Give your entire attention to what God is doing right now, and don’t get worked up about what may or may not happen tomorrow. God will help you deal with whatever hard things come up when the time comes” (Matthew 6:34, Eugene H. Peterson).
We can trust that promise at every time of year and in every moment of need.
Some more great ideas! To read or listen to an article in the weekly Christian Science Sentinel on family harmony during the holidays titled “Christ’s leading at Christmastime,” please click through to www.JSH-Online.com. There is no paywall for this content.
