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A Christmas reflection

What better way to celebrate the Christmas season than to put into practice the healing ideas Jesus taught and demonstrated? That’s what a woman did after awaking one Christmas morning with a swollen and inflamed face.

  • By Karen Neff

Christian Science Perspective audio edition
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The morning had begun early, and before turning on any lights I sat in the dark, praying and singing hymns of praise and gratitude to God for His goodness. It was Christmas! I felt deeply inspired and was especially grateful for the Christ, Truth – God’s healing message of love for all, which Jesus demonstrated so beautifully.

But when I stepped into the bathroom and turned on the light, what looked back at me in the mirror was shocking. My eyes were swollen and my face was red and inflamed.

How can this be, I asked myself, especially on this most holy of days? How could this ugliness appear after I had just finished praising God for the gift of Christ Jesus to the world?

An answer to this question immediately came to mind in the form of a Bible verse: “Be not deceived; God is not mocked” (Galatians 6:7). The seeming randomness of this thought was as startling to me as the image in the mirror! But it also really spoke to me. It prompted me to consider that what I was seeing was actually a deception about my real nature – a false, distorted picture being presented to me by the carnal mind.

Christian Science explains that the only legitimate Mind is God and is not in matter. The fallacious so-called mortal mind presents an inverted view of creation that contradicts our genuine, spiritual individuality as God’s children. God’s view of us as spiritual, good, and whole can never be altered or disturbed.

Christ Jesus came to show us all who we really are – the light and glory of God. The Bible puts it this way: “God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” (II Corinthians 4:6). And the healing works Jesus did proved the true beauty and wholeness and goodness of God, expressed in His children.

As I thought about all this on that Christmas morning, I saw clearly that the reflection in the mirror was a blatant mockery of that glory, a false claim that we are not truly God’s pure, unblemished children. What could this distorted image tell me about God, Spirit, good? Nothing! And so, it couldn’t tell me the truth about myself as made in God’s spiritual image, either.

I had planned to travel to another state to spend Christmas with family. It might have been tempting to stay home and hide my face, but I took a strong mental stand for the power of the ever-present Christ, Truth, to reveal the real, inviolate, spiritual view of creation. I felt divinely led to make the trip as planned.

By the time I arrived at my family’s home later that morning, the condition was already fading. There was no trace of swelling or redness by the next day.

That was a number of years ago, but the lesson of that Christmas morning has stayed with me and is a reminder each Christmas of the true meaning of this holy day. The greatest gift of all is the shift in thought and healing that come as we recognize what Christ Jesus taught and demonstrated: that God-given purity and health are ours to accept and experience, every day of the year.

“Thanks be unto God for his unspeakable gift!” (II Corinthians 9:15).

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