`Spring always wins'

WHEN our son was about five years old, we planned a picnic on Easter Sunday. However, the day before Easter we had a late-winter snowstorm. I spent some time apologizing to him about our forced change of plans. His answer was ``That's all right, Mom. Spring always wins!'' Surrounded by snow, clearly a sign of winter, he already knew from experience that winter was not permanent, no matter how unending it seemed at the moment.

Can we have this same kind of childlike expectancy of good? When a ``winter'' of physical illness or despair has gone on and on, is there some solid basis for the hope that it will be replaced by harmony?

Christian Science teaches us that there is always reason for hope because God, good, is absolutely supreme. God is the only genuine power. There is no other power. Nothing can overcome God. And because man is the image of God, as the Bible tells us in its very first chapter, nothing can truly overcome man.

Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, writes in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, ``Truth is always the victor.''1

But how can we prove this in the midst of evil, in the face of a struggle between truth and error, health and disease, peace and war?

Is the conviction that good always wins a Pollyanna attitude, wishful thinking? Is it based on a hope that if we believe hard enough in good, evil will just go away? No! It is a conviction demonstrated by Christ Jesus, the master Christian, who overcame evil in the form of sickness, sin, and even death. Jesus was never guilty of wishful thinking. He expected and experienced good results from his prayers, and he demanded of his followers to do as he did, to ``heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead, cast out devils.'' 2

To be a follower of Christ Jesus and heal the sick, we need to express a measure of the spiritual conviction he had in the supremacy of good. We need to stop accepting the false belief that there are alternatives to good.

Recently I began to experience all the symptoms of the flu, which had been prevalent in our community and had been much in the news. I prayed for a spiritual answer to counteract this claim that evil has power to make man sick and to move from one individual to another. My son's statement ``Spring always wins'' came to my thought. I felt reassured that this evil was so much less than Almighty God -- in fact, was not a reality at all but was powerless to influence me. I fell asleep praying and woke healed.

Mrs. Eddy writes: ``Maintain the facts of Christian Science, -- that Spirit is God, and therefore cannot be sick; that what is termed matter cannot be sick; that all causation is Mind, acting through spiritual law. Then hold your ground with the unshaken understanding of Truth and Love, and you will win.'' 3 1 Science and Health, p. 380. 2 Matthew 10:8. 3 Science and Health, p. 417. -- 30 --{et