What has infinity got to do with healing?
Understanding the concept of infinity plays a key role in the practice of Christian Science, as one man found out when he prayed for a horse in need of healing. As he turned to God for inspiration, a powerful sense of God’s goodness as infinite came to him. That changed the way he saw the horse – who was soon free of all the ailments.
There was a horse I love that was having one physical ailment after another. I didn’t want to see him suffer, so I did what I’ve found helpful countless times in dealing with problems: I prayed. But I quickly realized that for my prayers to be helpful, they needed to be more than simply a plea for the horse to be healed.
So I turned to God for aid in helping me understand how to pray better. As I listened for divine inspiration, what came to me was a deep sense of God’s excellence and grandeur as infinite good. I saw that if God, ever-present divine Love and Spirit, is infinite, that doesn’t leave space for a single limitation.
The Bible describes God this way: “The Lord he is God; there is none else beside him” (Deuteronomy 4:35). And a book that throws revealing light on the all-important spiritual meaning of the Bible – “Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures” by Monitor founder Mary Baker Eddy – builds on this concept. It says, “Allness is the measure of the infinite, and nothing less can express God” (p. 336).
The infinitude of God – of Spirit, which is entirely good and fills all space – isn’t a property that can be quantified with a measuring tape. There are no starting or ending points to infinite Spirit. Does this mean that for you and me living our everyday lives, God’s infinitude is too abstract to be meaningful?
Actually, it means the opposite. God’s infinitude has tremendous practical import. As the creations, or spiritual offspring, of God, divine Love, we are designed to show forth God’s limitless nature, expressed in qualities such as thoughtfulness, patience, purity, unselfishness, intelligence, and health.
These qualities are also boundless. Take thoughtfulness, for instance. Could we ever measure it with a ruler and tell other people that’s how much of it there is? No. Yet the quality of thoughtfulness certainly is substantial to us. We experience it ourselves and sense it in others, even though it isn’t a physical, measurable object.
Let’s take this reasoning forward another step. The nature of God’s children – you, me, everyone – is the outcome, or expression, of God, infinite Spirit, so it is not material. What must we do to become these creations of God? Nothing. Because we originated in God, we already are wholly spiritual.
Letting the infinite goodness of God inspire me was such a solid starting point for my prayers. God’s infinite goodness really became vivid for me, and I realized that this limitless goodness was expressed in all of creation. Science and Health explains, “The admission to one’s self that man is God’s own likeness sets man free to master the infinite idea” (p. 90). I felt this freedom in my prayers for the horse. I just loved taking the time to really feel and appreciate this spiritual truth.
One day, I came to an important moment of understanding. I couldn’t simultaneously believe in God’s infinite presence while also believing that the horse was experiencing God’s absence. Infinitude, I finally realized, really means what it implies – all presence. There are no vacuums in God.
Soon, everything that had ailed the horse was completely healed, and he went on enjoying his life.
God forever expresses His own infinite nature in His creation. “That which is born of the Spirit is spirit,” said Jesus (John 3:6). As God’s infinite ideas, you and I are perfect representatives of God, good, the All-in-all. The infinitude of God is what makes us exactly what we are. Best of all, it is the only thing making us what we are. And when we glimpse that spiritual reality, we feel it in our lives, with healing effect.