Love undivided
Separations of many kinds seem pervasive. No wonder even a glimpse of the wholeness and oneness of divine Love brings healing.
The human mind assumes that it is its own creator of love, fulfillment, well-being, and that it is capable of finding and giving all we need. But we soon learn that it really isn't able to do so. The limitations of human thought and effort underlie all the unhappiness we see around us. And these limitations arise from the belief in a life, love, and mind separate from God.
To recognize the true source of love and see love as ever flowing to us, never stopping, makes all the difference in our lives. It wipes away fear of being divided from good. However vivid or persuasive the belief of separateness may be, it dissolves before a realization of the actual fact of man's oneness with God, Love, who is absolutely good.
Recently I witnessed a small instance of the powerful healing influence of all-embracing Love. Going up in an elevator with a group of people, I overheard a woman exclaim how miserable, sick, and tired she felt. Immediately the thought came to me that this sense of separation from good doesn't need to be accepted for her or for anyone. It's not the truth of man in God's likeness. It is only the human mind's limited, materialistic sense of things, peddling bad news. Divine Love's deep satisfaction with its expression, man, cannot be undone by such a false sense of self. Fractured thinking, a belief in many minds and persons separated from Love's allness and wholeness, is error because God, Love, is the only Mind. Christian Science has shown me that we do not have to accept the premises of error but can rejoice in spiritual truth, recognizing what is really going on.
Christ Jesus saw man as not only entitled to God's love but as permanently one with Love. All the misery of the world, however huge it might appear, is not permanent or ultimately real, because it isn't found in divine Love. Love, God, is All-in-all. Love's allness precludes the possibility of there being anything else. And Christ Jesus' healing work, and that of his followers, proved these facts to be practical.
As I was thinking along these lines, I became aware of a stillness around me in the elevator. Everyone had left except the woman. Perhaps she knew that a number of Christian Scientists lived in the building, and before the elevator stopped again, she turned and asked me, "Are you a Christian Scientist?" "Yes," I answered, surprised by the sudden question. "Thank you so much," the woman said, smiling lovingly.
How reassuring to know we can trust divine Love's everpresent, unceasing love for us and for all. Prayer in Christian Science starts from the standpoint of Love's allness. Starting there fills us with the inspiration that dissolves fear and a sense of separation. Prayer acknowledges the concrete good that is already and always here because God is All-in-all. It acknowledges. our true selfhood as perfect in Love's image.
When our heart is full of the truth, we yield to the spiritual fact of man's oneness with God. Healing is the natural result.
When we enhance our sense of good through prayer, we realize that good includes everyone; no one is separated from God, because Love and its creation are undivided. We can acknowledge the power of divine Love to offset human misery, and we can treasure our neighbor's true selfhood and inseparability from Love. In this way we help spread the sunshine of spiritual understanding wherever people are experiencing uneasiness and division.
Our Way-shower, Christ Jesus, was open only to divine influence. No feeling of separation from God could take root in his life. "I and my Father are one" (John 10:30), he declared. He embodied love for God, good; divine Love was the only Life he knew. In Science and Health Mrs. Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, writes of Jesus: "The 'man of sorrows' best understood the nothingness of material life and intelligence and the mighty actuality of all-inclusive God, good. These were the two cardinal points of Mind-healing, or Christian Science, which armed him with Love" (p. 52).
Prayer-attuned thought helps us to realize that God's goodness is never absent. That is, as follow Jesus' example of having only the Life, or Mind, that is all-embracing Love, we see more of the might of Love in our lives, even when we may have assumed it was lost. This infinite Love unites its children in ways that always bless.
This truth came clearly to view one evening when a Christian Science practitioner heard a cryptic message on her answering machine. It was from a man who thought he had reached the mechanic who was working on his car. She called the man back to tell him that he had dialed the wrong number. Surprised to learn he had misdialed and reached a Christian Science practitioner, he explained that he also was a student of Christian Science. He went on to say that he was having a severe hearing loss and was feeling futility and frustration with this chronic condition. He asked if the practitioner would be willing to help him through prayer and to give him Christian Science treatment that evening. She said she would be glad to do so.
She reminded him that absolutely nothing could rob him of his actual, spiritual unity with good, God, because God and man were completely intact. The Apostle Paul's reference to Christ was most reassuring: "Ye are complete in him" (Col. 2:10). The man joyously accepted that undivided, sweet sense of life in divine Love.
Through prayer the practitioner's thoughts were filled with the infinite possibilities of God's ever-presence. Man in God's likeness could not for a moment be separated from the all-loving presence of God, the only source of his being. The ungodlike condition presenting itself could not impress her thoughts, and this individual's true condition as God's perfect child became immediately apparent to her. She knew with great certainty that he could truly rejoice in his completeness. So, it was no surprise when the man called the next day to share the good news that he was healed of the hearing loss. With a voice filled with joy he said, "By golly, my hearing is as clear as a bell!"
Later he wrote in a letter to the practitioner that the healing inspired him so deeply and so filled him with gratitude for divine Love's provision that he "took up the study of Christian Science more earnestly and faithfully." He further wrote that he had had "many more wonderful healings through the understanding of God." Spiritual thoughts, telling us of Love's presence and of man's true nature, are inseparable from God; and coming directly from Him, they heal.
To pray with a scientific understanding of God gives us an undivided view of His presence and power. It inspires a love for and obedience to Him. With invigorating clarity we perceive that Love is the only healing and sustaining power. When our heart is full of the truth, we yield to the spiritual fact of man's oneness with God. Then we know with absolute certainty that there is no power that can separate us from Him. Healing is the natural result of the immediate availability of the one infinite, loving God.
Jesus told his followers, "If ye keep my commandments, ye shall abide in my love; even as I have kept my Father's commandments, and abide in his love" (John 15:10). As we treasure man's unity with God and live in harmony with His law, we meet each moment in our life with an abiding sense of good. We experience increasing evidence of the all-inclusive, infinite power of Love.
