Editorial June 4, 1990 Issue

Prayer deep enough to heal

Elaine Natale

When we want or need something—particularly when we desperately want or need something—is there a "harder" way we can pray? Some higher intensity of pleading with God, some stronger way of "concentrating," that will make our prayer work? The approach Christian Science takes to prayer removes this feeling of tense personal effort. It helps us trust God more by showing us what God is really like. The more we understand God, the clearer it will be to us what effective praying is, and how it works.

The Bible tells us that God created man. As we read the Bible through, we begin to see that God isn't like a human being with certain limitations. God is entirely good and doesn't have any limitations at all. He made us good, in His image and likeness. We're like Him. As God is Spirit, we are the image and likeness of Spirit, not uncontrollable physical beings who have little recourse but to accept injury, sickness, and sin.

Mrs. Eddy saw in the Bible that this spiritual truth was the basis on which Christ Jesus healed. In Science and Health she reasons: "Good cannot result in evil. As God Himself is good and is Spirit, goodness and spirituality must be immortal. Their opposites, evil and matter, are mortal error, and error has no creator. If goodness and spirituality are real, evil and materiality are unreal and cannot be the outcome of an infinite God, good."^{Science and Health, p. 277.}