QUESTIONER: Many people are willing to acknowledge that others have been restored to health or have found needed guidance through prayer. But sometimes people wonder it God plays favorites. They want to know if God's help is really available to everyday people like themselves.

SPEAKER: Anyone can experience the healing power of prayer. God's help is really available to everyone. I don't believe that God could play favorites. He doesn't love one more than another. What He gives to one, He gives to all. Man is His beloved child, and that includes all men—no one is left out.

There are many references in the Bible to the impartial nature of God. Peter expressed it this way in the book of Acts (10: 34): "Of a truth I perceive that God is no respecter of persons." Then God's love, God's goodness, is available to everyone. Perhaps that's what the Psalmist was concerned about. In one of the Psalms there is a refrain that runs all the way through it. It goes like this (107:8): "Oh that men would praise the Lord for his goodness, and for his wonderful works to the children of men!" He recognized that the good that anyone had came to him from God, and as we acknowledge God as the source of good, then we open the door for more of that good to come into our experience.

Now, the prophet Jeremiah must have seen this when he prayed, "Heal me, O Lord, and I shall be healed; save me, and I shall be saved" (17:14). Jeremiah was sure of the power of God to heal and to save. As we understand it in Christian Science, health and soundness are God's gifts to man. As we learn why this is so, we bring healing into our present-day experience.

QUESTIONER: But is this knowledge available to a person like myself who is not a Christian Scientist?

SPEAKER: If "God is no respecter of persons," as Peter said, then His gifts are here for everyone. We must reach out for them, of course, but it would he contrary to God's law of harmony for Him to show partiality in any way.

QUESTIONER: How does one go about finding this truth, or this love of God?

SPEAKER: We do that through prayer. Anyone who can think can pray. But part of that prayer is listening. As we listen for that still small voice, it is available at all times and under all circumstances.

QUESTIONER: Isn't there a question of whether an individual is good enough to be helped or to be healed by God?

SPEAKER: It is not a question of human goodness but God's goodness that's available and at hand all of the time. You see, God knows man as His sinless, perfect image and likeness. Now, spiritual man is the true identity of each one of us. I'm not referring to the outward appearance of a material man, but to man, whom God made. Man can never be cut off from God's love and grace, that is, God's loving-kindness and His power. It was on this basis that the Master, Christ Jesus, healed multitudes of sickness and sin.

In "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," Mary Baker Eddy writes (p. 494): "It is not well to imagine that Jesus demonstrated the divine power to heal only for a select number or for a limited period of time, since to all mankind and in every hour, divine Love supplies all good."

QUESTIONER: What about those who don't feel they understand enough to be healed?

SPEAKER: Well, I think you can recall instances where individuals who didn't understand God have been healed or saved, even in emergencies: but they did reach out to God. Now in reaching out to God they acknowledged that there was a power beyond themselves: and in opening their consciousness their thought—to that power, they received the power that saved the situation. The warmth and the power of Love, which is God furnish us with what we need to have, even the understanding of God.

QUESTIONER: How do we find that power, that divine Love?

SPEAKER: It isn't a matter of finding it. Sometimes it is just a matter of recognizing it because it is already at hand. Paul expressed it this way in his letter to the Ephesians (2:8): "By grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God."

God's gift to man is soundness and well-being; all God has for you or for me or for anyone else is more and more good, not less of it. There is a law of God, a law of good always operating in our behalf, always working with us not against us. You see, the power and the grace of divine Love bring one freedom from fear, sin, ignorance, and sickness of all kinds. Now, this law can be understood. There are spiritual rules that can be understood and demonstrated.

Perhaps I can share the experience of a relative of mine. This man for a number of years had had a difficulty with severe headaches. One day he came home from the office in the middle of the afternoon and went right to bed because he was so ill.

His little daughter, who was not quite four years old, knew that something was wrong with her father. She waited till he was settled. Then she went into his bedroom and closed the door, and she said, "Daddy, I'm going to talk to you about God." And then she told him, "God is Love, and Love wouldn't give you a headache." Then she said, "I'm going to talk to God for you."

Now, I don't know how she prayed, but she closed her eyes for a few moments, and then she turned to her father and said: 'Daddy, I've talked to God, and I know everything is all right now," and she left the room. And everything was all right. He went to sleep, and he woke up a few hours later entirely well. The headaches did not recur. He was completely healed.

I recall that he asked me what his little girl knew that he didn't know about God. Well, what she knew about God was not from an intellectual point of view. She had been taught in the home and in the Sunday School that God is Love and that that Love was right where she was at all times. She had experienced several healings through prayer, and she knew that if God loved her, God also loved her father and that that love would heal her father.

If we as older children would have the same confidence, would turn our hearts, our thoughts, as wholeheartedly to God as this little one did we should find that He is right at hand and that His law, His power of good, is available to us under all circumstances.

Mrs. Eddy writes in Science and Health (pp. 12, 13): "In divine Science, where prayers are mental, all may avail themselves of God as 'a very present help in trouble.' Love is impartial and universal in its adaptation and bestowals. It is the open fount which cries, 'Ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters.'"