Article September 10, 1966 Issue

"Heaven's aftersmile"

ARTHUR FIESER

What a wonderful release must have been experienced by Lazarus, his family, and his friends when Christ Jesus commanded, "Loose him, and let him go"!^{John 11; 44;} A few days before, the Master had said to his disciples that Lazarus was asleep. When they failed to understand, he then plainly told them that Lazarus was dead but that he would raise him out of this false belief. When Lazarus appeared bound with graveclothes, human consciousness needed to be completely loosed from this limiting belief of death; and Jesus' command did just this.

When a loved one passes from our sight through death, we really know, as Christian Scientists, that he has but passed into a new belief. The spiritual fact that he has not actually died is not too difficult to accept in Christian Science. But acknowledging the nothingness of death is only the beginning of our work; the truth needs to be proved. The hard part is the loosing of our thoughts of our loved one from our fears, our sense of suffering, loss, remorse, and defeat. We need to loose ourselves from believing in his dependency on us or our dependency on him, knowing that divine Love is caring for all and that the dear Christ is with each one, bridging humanity's need to God's divinity.

During a time of grief over the loss of a loved one, I was driving one cloudy, rainy day to my mother's home. There seemed to be an overpowering sense of grief, aloneness, and defeat. While it rained, a beautiful rainbow spanned the sky, and I looked at it enraptured, seeing in it a sign of immortality for every one of God's loved ones. Then the weather cleared; but the rainbow still shone. In fact, as I continued to drive, the sun came out and the clouds disappeared; but still a part of the rainbow was visible. I thought that it might be due to looking through some oil on the windshield, but through the open car window I saw a portion of the rainbow hovering in the sky.

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