Health that isn’t vulnerable
Too often our health can seem susceptible to circumstance or chance. But the idea that true health is sustained by God, divine Spirit, brings help and healing.
Every day is a learning experience. From newspapers, magazines, books, and the internet to radio, television, and the people in our lives, we can be educated in a variety of ways. There are all kinds of information to assimilate.
At times, any of these sources may try to convey a feeling that our health is inevitably at risk, vulnerable. For instance, recently I read an article asserting our susceptibility to various material influences, such as age and other circumstances, which could degrade our health.
This brings us to a crossroads: We can go down the path of thinking that life is fundamentally material, with its fears that our health is always vulnerable to material threats. Or we can consider another path, one in which we take seriously the idea that life is spiritually formed, and is governed by laws that are not subject to material circumstances.
The writings of Mary Baker Eddy, who discovered Christian Science, shed light on this spiritual view. In her key text, “Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures,” she says: “For right reasoning there should be but one fact before the thought, namely, spiritual existence” (p. 492). This spiritual existence, or reality, is based in God, the supremely good divine Spirit.
This has real implications for us and our health. The Bible indicates that we are God’s offspring, or image. As such, our real nature is spiritual, good, and whole as well, and therefore not vulnerable to ill health. Perceiving something of this spiritual reality brings tangible help, as I experienced at a time I had lost my sense of balance, my equilibrium, for no apparent reason.
I realized I had a decision to make: I could choose to just go along with a matter-based view of life and the symptoms I was experiencing. Or, as a result of my study of Christian Science, I could give my whole heart to prayer, coupled with a spiritual view of reality, and trust it to bring healing.
So I prayed with this powerful idea in Science and Health: “There is but one primal cause. Therefore there can be no effect from any other cause, and there can be no reality in aught which does not proceed from this great and only cause” (p. 207).
This is how I reasoned spiritually based on this idea: God, as the only legitimate cause, is harmonious and good. Then, how could the spiritual offspring of the Divine ever experience anything but God’s harmony and goodness? How could I ever lose my sense of balance?
My prayers also affirmed that since Spirit is the only cause, a material body could not dictate my health, could not originate any kind of effect on God’s spiritual creation. Ultimately, our true health has its source in God, and therefore can never be lacking. God’s children are never vulnerable.
In less than an hour, the symptoms disappeared, and they have not returned.
A spiritual view of existence and our relation to God as His spiritual offspring can help us to overcome the fear of our health being at risk or susceptible to material factors and conditions. It’s true: We can each experience God’s healing power.