Joyful, capable – that’s us!
A Christian Science perspective: A more spiritual view of our identity lifts us – and others – in concrete ways.
I lay on the couch, reminiscing about a time I had felt happy, capable, able to help others. Now I was feeling sick and helpless, and the thought “How could that joyful, energetic person possibly have been me?” crossed my mind.
But of course it was me. In fact, I realized, even though it didn’t feel like it at that moment, health and joy constituted a much truer sense of me than illness and lethargy did.
Sometimes it can seem as if we’re stuck – with an injury, or sadness, or discouragement about what we hear in the news, or uncertainty about what the future holds. At times like this, I’ve found it helpful to think about the nature of God as infinite divine Love, and each of us as Love’s spiritual reflection, safe and cared for. This is the truest way we can identify ourselves.
What we feel or see at a given moment isn’t always consistent with the truth about our real being. But as we dig deeper, as we seek a more spiritual sense of our identity, we find ourselves – and others – lifted up in concrete ways.
Christ Jesus showed the profound healing effect of understanding that health and harmony are normal and natural to the creation of a God whose goodness “endures continually” (Psalms 52:1). We can grow in this understanding through heartfelt prayer to better know this infinitely good God that created us not as mortals doomed to periods of misery but as spiritual expressions of the divine Being, eternally reflecting wholeness and joy.
That day, when I felt so weak and unwell, the realization that God never made us to suffer lifted me out of my mental anguish, and my health was quickly restored, too. “Good is natural and primitive,” explains Christian Science Discoverer Mary Baker Eddy in “Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures” (p. 128). We can all experience the deeper, more spiritual sense of peace that comes when we look beyond the surface and toward God’s reality and total goodness – right here and now.