It was my grandmother who taught me that God is Love. There were eight of us grandchildren, and she expressed unconditional love for each one of us. We watched her express love as a gentle and patient peacemaker. Grandma’s love for God and family, in bad times and in good, encouraged and uplifted me. She made me want to learn more about divine Love and how Love heals.
As I studied Christian Science, I learned that it was through Christ, the true, perfect light, that God was actively blessing my grandmother’s life—and blessing all. The ever-present Christ heals and saves; it brings to receptive human consciousness the light of spiritual Truth—to be understood, and so seen and felt.
Through prayer and spiritual receptivity, it is possible for everyone to experience the touch of Christ. As I grew up, I experienced numerous circumstances where the healing and saving activity of the Christ, revealing man’s spiritual relation to God, awakened me to the truth of my being as a loved child of God.
One summer I had the opportunity to become aware of the presence of the Christ in a distressing situation. A group of friends and I embarked on a river-rafting trip down a rather calm-looking river. None of us realized the intensity of the current, and we were all without life jackets because most of the river was shallow with only about four feet of water.
While coming upon an eddy, I suddenly fell out of my small raft and went underwater. The eddy had carved a deep hole in the riverbed while it turned and churned tumultuously, and my attempt to swim up was not successful. It was dark, and I had to keep my eyes tightly shut.
Then, all of a sudden, I was impelled to declare mentally, “God is my Life.” With the affirmation of this truth, I at once felt the light of Christ, Truth, turning my thought away from fear toward the understanding of God, divine Love, as my only Life. I felt a spiritual sense of trust—a confidence in the truth that I was held in the arms of our loving Father-Mother. I suddenly felt safe.
The assurance that I was loved and being cared for made me relax, and I began to float to the surface. I finally got a sense of direction when I could see light through my tightly closed eyes. When I came to the surface, I opened my eyes, saw the raft, and swam to it. I worked my way up onto it and continued safely on down the river.
This experience was solid proof that we are each capable of being receptive to the ever-present Christ, and able to prove that our health, harmony, and safety are intact and not in jeopardy.
Whatever situation we might find ourselves in, happiness and health are ours to demonstrate and manifest because, as Christ and Christian Science have shown us, divine Love is the Father-Mother of each one of us, and God is ever-present good.
In the New Testament we read, “God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life” (John 3:16). Being the representative of Christ, expressing the Christ perfectly, Jesus showed us the way of fearless thought and loving action by healing and teaching, and by overcoming the cross.
By following his example, we can feel and know the Christ-idea of perfect being for ourselves. The Christ is timeless, and many who have gone before us have been victorious over various forms of evil by heeding Christ, the divine idea of God. The Christ elevates thought to the infinite possibilities of God’s healing and saving power, so we can realize divine Love’s blessings in our lives today.
Adversity affords us the opportunity to let our thought come into conformity with Christ. We can start today to seize this opportunity to prove that happiness and health are real and true. But how? By wholeheartedly accepting oneself as the child of God. If we regularly and humbly turn to our divine Parent, our Father-Mother Love, for spiritual understanding and guidance, then in any trouble, suffering, or emergency, we can experience the saving power of Christ, as I was able to do in the river. The humility to open our thought to the Christ, the true idea of God, and to accept Truth, is what enables us to be loosened from the bonds of lack and limitation.
Each one of us is capable of doing this, through our sincerity and Christ’s love reaching us. In Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, Mary Baker Eddy writes: “Christ is the true idea voicing good, the divine message from God to men speaking to the human consciousness. The Christ is incorporeal, spiritual,—yea, the divine image and likeness, dispelling the illusions of the senses; the Way, the Truth, and the Life, healing the sick and casting out evils, destroying sin, disease, and death” (p. 332).
The true idea that voices the divine message of good from God to us works within our thought to eliminate error. The Christ enables us to broaden our spiritual understanding, our faith, and our love. It opens human consciousness to the one creator, the all-powerful, infinite Mind, supplying us with spiritual ideas applicable to human predicaments.
Mrs. Eddy writes in Science and Health: “Hold perpetually this thought,—that it is the spiritual idea, the Holy Ghost and Christ, which enables you to demonstrate, with scientific certainty, the rule of healing, based upon its divine Principle, Love, underlying, overlying, and encompassing all true being”
(p. 496).
My fears were calmed that day when I turned to God in the river. I felt the touch of Christ bearing me up, and I experienced the surge of God’s unconditional love. I realized that I was at-one with God, and that in divine Love’s embrace I could not drown.
The light of Christ is always present to brighten and lead the way. God is Life, Truth, and Love, and this reality buoys us. It is the light that eliminates darkness and doubt, and destroys the power of death. It reveals to us that we are all the loved, cherished, and perfect ideas of God’s creating. Then we know that it is possible for us to experience the healing and saving touch of Christ.
Publish date July 18, 2016 in the Christian Science Sentinel by Marsha Pecaut CS
