Article October 15, 1938 Issue

Joy, a Healing Quality

FRANCES R. CORNER

Joy is not a quality to be expressed only when things are going right, and pushed into the background when things seem to be going wrong, for joy is a spiritual quality and belongs to our true selfhood now and eternally. It is part of what we have inherited from our Father-Mother Love, and, like everything else God has given us, it has been given to us to use. Jesus had a clear sense of the permanence of joy when he said to his disciples, "Your joy no man taketh from you." So let us claim it as our own, knowing it belongs to us by reflection, and use it in God's service.

In the book of Proverbs is the statement, "A merry heart doeth good like a medicine." A definition of "merry" is "joyous." When Solomon became king of Israel, he prayed earnestly for an understanding heart, so that he might rule his people wisely. An understanding heart is a truly joyous heart, for the understanding of God always brings joy. In Christian Science two of the synonyms for God are Mind and Soul. And Mrs. Eddy tells us that "man is the expression of God's being" (Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 470). So the consciousness which expresses the intelligence and the wisdom of Mind, also expresses the sinlessness and the joyousness of Soul. It beholds the beauty, completeness, and perfection of God and His creation and rejoices in what it beholds.

One who had struggled long with a physical problem and had become subject to discouragement, decided one day that what she needed was to learn to rejoice. She began by sitting at the piano and singing five or six hymns from the Christian Science Hymnal every day: and, although error at first sought to interrupt with its claims of discouragement and depression, she continued singing daily, persisting in her efforts to rejoice. One day the thought came to her that she was struggling to attain something which already belonged to her, so she declared vigorously that she could not be discouraged or depressed, because joy, health, vitality, and right enthusiasm belonged to her as a child of God! After a few days of this true thinking, she was led to ask a practitioner for help. In a few days all discouragement and depression had vanished, and the healing of the physical condition soon followed. Thus she proved that the effort to express joy opens the door of one's thinking to the divine direction, which inevitably brings blessings.

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