A great calm

PROMISES of healing throughout the Bible are a source of great comfort to many today. God told the children of Israel, ``I am the Lord that healeth thee.''1 Christ Jesus showed centuries later through his healing works that this promise is perpetual. It is relevant to today's turbulent world events and individual needs. The healing touch of Christ -- the divine enlightenment and grace coming to the spiritually receptive thought in any age -- brings a peace filled with the certainty of God's healing love. The serenity that Jesus exemplified was a fearlessness that had Godbestowed power behind it. When the disciples were traveling with the Master in a boat that was threatened by a violent storm, they appealed to him for help. Although he had been asleep, he arose and rebuked the winds and the sea, Matthew tells us, ``and there was a great calm.''2 Such an example of dominion over turbulent conditions must have awakened in the disciples a greater desire to understand the divine power that heals and saves.

Divine healing is still available to us today, stilling storms of fear and danger in practical ways. When our first child was a toddler, he fell while playing and struck his forehead forcibly against a metal object. The wound looked severe. While I rushed to help and comfort him, my husband called a Christian Science practitioner to ask for help for the child through prayer. The result was instant healing. The bleeding stopped suddenly and completely. Simultaneously the crying ceased, and the emergency was over. I felt great gratitude and joy that the well-being of our child had been restored. But more, I felt an inner quietness that I had not known before -- a calm awareness of God's comforting love; a secure sense that He was present and that we could trust Him; a dawning recognition that spiritual healing is not a thing of the past.

This experience was one of several that led me to investigate the Scriptural emphasis on healing. Although I had long cherished the Bible, I had not been inclined to believe that the healings related in its pages are a possibility today. Since that time, however, I have learned through the study of the Bible and the Christian Science textbook, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy,3 that the element of healing with which Jesus introduced Christianity has not become irrelevant with the passage of time but remains vital and applicable. It is a present, living possibility, because the truth on which it is based -- the spiritual status of man as the perfect image and likeness of the one perfect God -- is unchanging and universally demonstrable.

The sincere desire to understand the healing activity of Christ heads us back to the Bible with an open thought to learn and obey. The directives there stir a spiritual inquisitiveness that yearns to see more of the healing power of God. The Christly command ``Heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead, cast out devils''4 still stands. While the Bible contains the ultimate answers to the great challenges the world faces today, it does not persuade us to believe all is well when it isn't. The Bible does, however, give us the hope that establishes a commitment to go forward in the way pointed out by Jesus. And it opens to our thought the spiritual reality of being -- ``the things which are not seen.''5 This is reality, in its truest sense, and here all is well. Our awakening to this reality through prayer, even in small measure, results in healing.

Mankind has not outgrown the need for earnest inquiry into the healings the Bible contains. In fact, world conditions impress that need on the conscience more deeply than ever. When through prayer we begin to gain even a degree of Christly calmness, we will not be bewildered at the promises the Bible includes nor doubt their fulfillment. Christian Science shows how spiritual healing can be put into effect in our lives today. Offering hope and comfort, Science says, in the words of Mrs. Eddy: ``To the burdened and weary, Jesus saith: `Come unto me.' O glorious hope! there remaineth a rest for the righteous, a rest in Christ, a peace in Love. The thought of it stills complaint; the heaving surf of life's troubled sea foams itself away, and underneath is a deep-settled calm.''6

1Exodus 15:26. 2See Matthew 8:24-27. 3The Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science. 4Matthew 10:8. 5II Corinthians 4:18. 6Message to The Mother Church for 1902, p. 19. DAILY BIBLE VERSE: Be still, and know that I am God: I will be exalted among the heathen, I will be exalted in the earth. Psalms 46:10