God’s promise of healing
Today’s column includes an experience that helps illustrate how we can rely on God for healing.
In the Bible, it is recorded that God told Moses: “I am the Lord that healeth thee” (Exodus 15:26). And through study of the Bible and the writings of Mary Baker Eddy, who discovered Christian Science, I’ve gained a trust in this ability of God to heal.
That might seem pretty radical today, when many wonder if it is even possible that God exists, let alone if He can heal sickness. But I’ve proven in my own experience that it is possible to experience God’s love in healing.
To illustrate, one winter I suffered with heavy, persistent coughing day and night. It was difficult to carry on conversations or to be in public, and it was physically draining. My neighbor would sometimes compassionately express concern because she could hear me struggling through the walls.
I had a sense of how this problem might be medically diagnosed, but I didn’t pursue that avenue because I had experienced the practicality of leaning on God. I knew His love was capable of healing physical challenges.
In deep humility, I turned away from what I considered to be a circus of clamoring symptoms and suffering and began to quietly think about the truth of God’s supremacy and of my relation to Him as His beloved daughter. I knew God to be omnipotent and ever-present Spirit and that He cares for and protects His creation. I started to feel God’s presence, power, and love, and it became clear that the Father is always looking out for me.
As I was praying, I realized that how I was feeling about a woman I interacted with from time to time was completely out of step with everything I knew to be true about God’s goodness and the immediacy of His help. It seemed that this woman was always trying to make me feel insignificant and inferior, and I let this bother me. I was fond of her, but the feeling was apparently not mutual. Her actions indicated that she had no real interest in getting along, but rather was determined to display indifference. This had been taking place for several years. The show would always go on, so to speak, but I would end up feeling hurt by her behavior.
While a need for healing does not always result in exposing an attitude that needs changing, I did understand the wisdom and benefit of heeding God’s guidance. I saw that divine Love, another name for God, was directing me to forgive, to free myself from reacting to this individual’s personality, and to be merciful. No sooner had I begun obeying this direction and making a mental shift from counterproductivity to kindness, then I began appreciating her fine qualities and spiritual identity as a pure child of an all-loving God. Rejoicing in how much God loved both of us, the coughing started to abate.
I recognized that what was taking place was the operation of the divine law of healing. In “Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures,” Mary Baker Eddy speaks to this: “To be every whit whole, man must be better spiritually as well as physically.… The body improves under the same regimen which spiritualizes the thought;… This is the law of cause and effect, or like producing like” (pp. 369-370). As I surrendered my disappointments and changed my thinking about this person, the coughing lessened. Uplifted, spiritual, loving thoughts were filling my consciousness and at the same time improving the physical picture from sickness to health.
This healing required persistence. Whenever I would fall for the temptation to return to frustration, the coughing would pick back up again. But I persevered, making greater efforts to express genuine love and respect. The burdensome coughing then totally disappeared, never to return.
Although I don’t see this woman much anymore, our relationship has improved. I am grateful for that as well as for the end of the coughing. Steadfast prayer, reliance on God, and the purifying of my thought naturally resulted in permanent healing.
Spiritual healing is not a formula, but it does require elevating thought from a material sense of things to the divine sense. Christ Jesus instructed, “Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free” (John 8:32). No one is excluded from knowing God’s wonderful truth and experiencing divine healing.