For several days I had been very sick and in bed. When I called a Christian Science practitioner for help in praying for healing, he listened quietly as I explained my situation, then he gently challenged my assessment of myself as being sick and living in a material body.
“That’s not you,” he said. “You live …” He paused, searching for the right word to describe the truth of my being, then added “everywhere.”
I was stunned by this answer. Not because the last word seemed outlandish but because I instantly recognized its truth. As I hung up the phone in tears of awe mixed with relief, I wondered, “How could I have thought that the real me is confined to a lump of matter in time and space? I live in God, who is infinite and eternal. How could I have gotten it so wrong for so long?”
At that moment, it was as if a plug had been pulled on the illness – it drained away immediately.
What caused this sudden healing?
A hint can be found in Christ Jesus’ statement “The kingdom of God is within you” (Luke 17:21). The general belief is that each of us lives in a material body, while also possessing spiritual qualities. However, what Jesus was saying was not that we merely have a spiritual dimension but that the spiritual – the substance of the kingdom of God – is all there is and therefore all there is to us.
Christian Science, which is based on the Bible, especially the words and works of Jesus, teaches that God is All and that “there is none else” (Deuteronomy 4:39). We also learn from the Bible and the teachings of Christian Science that God is Spirit and created all. So everything that is real is actually spiritual, like God.
Another synonym for God is Love (see I John 4:8). So whatever is real, whatever is created by God, is also like Love – everlasting and harmonious. The Bible puts it this way: “God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good” (Genesis 1:31).
Understanding man – each one of us – to be the creation of Spirit brings into focus something very different from a physical body with five senses through which we experience a material environment. Mary Baker Eddy, who wrote the textbook of Christian Science, “Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures,” explains, “Rightly understood, instead of possessing a sentient material form, man has a sensationless body; and God, the Soul of man and of all existence, being perpetual in His own individuality, harmony, and immortality, imparts and perpetuates these qualities in man, – through Mind, not matter” (p. 280).
What seems to us to be a material body with all of its frailties and limitations is really a false perception of ourselves as living in a material world separate from God, infinite Mind, and governed by health laws that leave us vulnerable to disease, deterioration, and death. Replacing this false, material sense with the true, spiritual sense of man as the expression of God changes our experience.
That’s what happened to me. I got a clear glimpse of the fact that right where I thought I was in a material body experiencing illness, I was actually spiritual and living in the kingdom of God, expressing health, freedom, and joy. I saw that wherever God – Spirit, Love – is, which is everywhere, His qualities are being manifested, so I have never for an instant been separated from God, good. I’ve been entirely one with Him, loved and cared for, all along.
A Christian Science healing never leaves us where it found us in terms of our spiritual understanding. Since this experience, which occurred a number of years ago, I regularly go back to what I saw that day about being one with God, free of mortality and always in the kingdom of heaven.
Using this understanding as a starting point largely eliminates fear and gives us confidence that whatever challenge we may be facing, it can be resolved. I’ve found such prayer – such spiritual truth-knowing – to always be effective.
The kingdom of heaven is here, now and forever. Step by step, spiritual glimpse by spiritual glimpse, healing by healing, we can recognize that this is where we actually live – and, equally, that everything in the kingdom of heaven resides in us.
Adapted from an article published in the July 22, 2024, issue of the Christian Science Sentinel.
