Article August 17, 1968 Issue

The Recuperative Power of God

JEANNE STEELY LAITNER

Great Bible characters demonstrated that the power of God can always be utilized in a recuperative, or restorative, way. Moses, after strenuous years of leading the Israelites to the Promised Land, was not depleted or exhausted. Deuteronomy records, "Moses was an hundred and twenty years old when he died: his eye was not dim, nor his natural force abated."^{Deut. 34:7;} Elijah demonstrated God's bounty for a widow in Zarephath who, with her son, was on the verge of starvation. Through Christ Jesus' understanding of God and of man's sonship with Him the sick were healed and the dead were raised.

What is the understanding of God that operates to recover health, strength, and supply? And how may this understanding be applied in a practical way to present experience? The teachings of Christian Science, which derives its authority from the Bible, reveal that God is the perfect creator of man. Because the creator is perfect, the genuine selfhood of each individual, his spiritual manhood, must be perfect. And he is eternally preserved at the standpoint of his God given perfection. As the individual begins to understand the nature of his true being, his spiritual sonship with God, his thinking is gradually freed from fear, ignorance, and materiality. The effect of such increasingly spiritualized thinking is healing and regeneration throughout his human experience.

In speaking of Jesus and his constant recognition of his true selfhood as God's Son, Mrs. Eddy writes, "It was this retreat from material to spiritual selfhood which recuperated him for triumph over sin, sickness, and death."^{No and Yes, p. 36;} Jesus was convinced of his sonship with God, of his eternal at-one-ment with the one Father, the one creator. This knowledge gave him power over every phase of evil, or error, both for himself and others.