The ‘notifications’ that heal

Many applications on smartphones or tablets have an option to sign up for “notifications,” or pop-up messages. These alert us to new info within the app that we may find interesting. Depending what one opts in to, it can be easy to become overrun with notifications!

This has prompted me to start paying closer attention to which notifications I value the most. In fact, I’ve found that the most consistently helpful “notifications” aren’t from a particular app, or any app at all, but are from God – inspiration from divine Love. These “notifications” have a real impact.

God is constantly notifying us of the good news that we are His children, reflections of divine Spirit. This brings the assurance that we are in fact spiritual – that God, not matter, is the only valid cause in our lives.

It can seem there are plenty of notices that would contradict this spiritual reality of God, good, as supreme. Sometimes they even appear to come as our own thoughts! As we start praying more diligently to discern inspiration received from divine Love, we may become more aware of when we feel annoyed, impatient, worried, or cynical and recognize that such thoughts could not stem from God. Thus they are false impositions on our consciousness that can be rejected and healed.

The Christ, Truth, is ever redeeming and blessing us as we learn to pay closer attention to Love’s notifications. An example of this was when, after Jesus’ resurrection, Jesus asked his disciple Peter three times if he loved him. Now, previously, before Jesus’ crucifixion, Peter had sometimes heeded impulses that weren’t very Christlike. Out of fear, he had lied three times that he wasn’t one of Jesus’ disciples (see John 18). But this time, it was divine Love’s notifications of goodness and grace that won out in Peter’s heart, and he replied to Jesus that he did love him. This enabled him to live a life filled with service to God and humanity, healing in Jesus’ name.

Looking back on my own life, I remember a time when I found a colleague very annoying. To my way of thinking, she was not always kind or honest. This caused conflict and discord in our working relationship, and it didn’t help the atmosphere for those around us, either.

I felt a desire to handle the situation through prayer to understand what divine Love knew about this person, rather than subscribing to mental messages of negativity that focused on personality and drama. I reasoned that the nature of each of God’s children, meaning all of us, must mirror the nature of God Himself, which includes purity, kindness, and integrity.

Mary Baker Eddy writes in the Christian Science textbook, “Man reflects infinite Truth, Life, and Love. The nature of man, thus understood, includes all that is implied by the terms ‘image’ and ‘likeness’ as used in Scripture” (“Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures,” p. 94).

As I continued to pray, affirming that each and every one of God’s sons and daughters reflects only the divine nature of God – infinite Truth, Life, and Love – I started to observe qualities in this individual that I hadn’t noticed before. I saw that she did in fact express honesty and that she truly cared about those around her and often let them know this. My view of her became much more in line with what God knew of her – and our relationship improved.

Divine Love is constantly delivering “notifications” of peace, trustworthy guidance, and continuing grace and joy. Each of us can mentally “subscribe” to these messages, to keep our thought attuned to God and experience all the good that comes with yielding to divine Truth.