The health you always include

While I was in college, I worked in a greenhouse. When brown, dry bulbs arrived in early spring, they didn’t look like much. But when given light, water, and warmth, they would eventually bloom into beautiful daffodils, crocuses, tulips, and fragrant hyacinths.

Whatever seems dormant, or even nonexistent, in our lives now – happiness, opportunity, or health – can come to full bloom through the power of God’s love.

Mary Baker Eddy, the founder of this news organization, was walking down a street in Lynn, Massachusetts, one day and saw a man with a disability that prevented him from walking. She went to him and, leaning close, said, “God loves you.” According to a woman who observed this scene, Mrs. Eddy continued on her way, and the man got up and walked away, healed (see Clifford Smith, “Historical Sketches,” p. 78).

Mrs. Eddy had been studying her Bible for years, poring over Jesus’ healings and searching for an understanding of what he knew about God that had brought health and well-being to so many. She fully accepted the promise of Jesus’ reassuring words, “If ye continue in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed; and ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free” (John 8: 31, 32).

In this scriptural study she was discovering the law of God, which unfolds our true identity and brings healing to any situation. This law, which she named Christian Science, undergirds our innate sense that we are not biological organisms born into matter that grow, deteriorate, and die but are spiritual, individual, complete ideas of God, Spirit, created to express love, health, and holiness. Seeing ourselves in this way progressively frees us from fear, limitation, and illness.

This was proved in Mrs. Eddy’s experience as healings like that of the man she encountered on the street were repeated by her, and by her students, in accord with Jesus’ promise that the truth would bring freedom from illness and sin. She shared this wonderful discovery in her monumental book “Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures.”

Readers of this book continue to experience proof that healing through prayer is as possible today as it was when Jesus taught and practiced it.

Christian Science teaches that a humble willingness to recognize God’s omnipotence and let Him show us in prayer who we are as His child helps us understand that right now we are completely spiritual and have an abundance of qualities such as life, intelligence, and health that are established in us by God. Comprehending this true identity clarifies that we are not material but are the very expression of God.

As floral bulbs include within themselves all the elements of the full blossom, so the goodness, joy, peace, wisdom, and strength we may hope for but don’t seem to be experiencing right now are already part of our God-established and God-maintained identity. Acknowledging this and yielding to the power of God brings all sorts of divine qualities to the surface, replacing whatever is wrong in our life.

At one time I was bothered by a growth on my shoulder. It was becoming increasingly painful and ugly despite my prayers. I yearned to be free from the discomfort and embarrassment of this growth.

Then one morning I found this statement about God in Science and Health: “Truth, Life, and Love are a law of annihilation to everything unlike themselves, because they declare nothing except God” (p. 243).

That was what I needed to know. Truth, Life, and Love were with me, destroying the fear and helplessness I had been living with and allowing health to unfold clearly in my life. I saw that the only development I could experience was the growing of spiritual qualities such as love, kindness, and humility. Within a few days the growth fell off, leaving behind only smooth skin.

This law of God, Christian Science, is always with everyone, always available to reverse a material view and its effects – sin and disease­ – and bring to light our inherent, pure Godlikeness and the happiness, health, and freedom that we always include.

Adapted from an editorial published in the April 8, 2024, issue of the Christian Science Sentinel.