"Now and here"

It has been said that the Hebrew tongue packs a world of meaning into a single word, and one such is "Immanuel," signifying "God with us." This holy theme roots deep in the heart of the Christian Scientist, where it pulses and sings of the all-presence of God. God is omnipresent because He is infinite Spirit. He is ever present because He is eternal Life. He is the all-loving Father-Mother of all, and as Paul writes, "Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty."^{II Cor. 3:17 ;} But where is He not? He is here and everywhere now and forever, and how can we ever be separated from Him who fills all space? It is an act of awakened consciousness to know and feel God's continual presence.

With Paul we can declare that "now is the accepted time" and "the day of salvation." ^6:2; Shouldn't we hasten to add, And here is the accepted place, here is the place of salvation? What is this "here"? Surely it's individual consciousness. Isn't this exactly where security is demonstrated?

Christ Jesus proved it so. He told his disciples: "Ye shall be scattered, every man to his own, and shall leave me alone and yet I am not alone, because the Father is with me." ^{John 16:32 ;} Earlier he had said: "I am not alone, but I and the Father that sent me....He that sent me is with me: the Father hath not left me alone; for I do always those things that please him." ^{8:16, 29;}

God is all the presence and all the power, in all ways and all the way. Many do not know this. Some question it. Others disbelieve it. Yet we all share in the infinite good, which is of God. And once we become spiritually conscious of this ever-present good and begin to understand it, the good can unfold without limits. When good is thankfully recognized, it is brought right to us in the form of demonstration.

A vagrant is one with no visible means of support and an atheist is one who recognizes no invisible means of support. The Christian Scientist has support both invisible and visible. His assurance stands inviolate, as his understanding of invisible Spirit gives him visible proof of God's all-power in spiritual healing.

There are Christian Scientists who say that their spiritual understanding jelled when they first realized they could never really die. They had seen that immortality is not some hopeful state reserved as a reward beyond the grave but that it is the present understanding of God as the only Life of man. The great and only cause being eternal Life, its effect is itself immortal and always individualized. This very realization can heal the ills of the race—the sinful and diseased states of mortality.

An atheist once scorned me for being a Christian Scientist. I asked the reason for his atheism. He said he could not acknowledge a God who could create deformed beings, who could stand by and observe the effects of pestilence and famine and war and do nothing to end them.

I said I could not accept such a deity either, that I had asked the same questions while holding an orthodox faith. Then in Science and Health I had found a new concept of God. God revealed Himself to its author, Mrs. Eddy, as the one perfect Mind. I thrilled to the scripture "Who is so great a God as our God?" ^{Ps. 77:13 ;} and to Mrs. Eddy's shattering discovery that this only true God knows nothing of evil or matter. I learned that I could not only revere and love God as a son loving his ideal Father but I could also truly worship and adore Him as the creator and beholder of His own perfect universe of infinite good.

This understanding of Him brought His presence and power home to my heart with full healing of the discords that had confronted me: a spinal injury that threatened me with a life of semi-invalidism in a wheelchair, bronchitis, acute sinus trouble, the protracted use of tobacco and alcohol. All these discordant conditions were healed in three weeks, solely by reading Science and Health from cover to cover.

These points deeply impressed my questioner, so I showed him three scriptural passages that to my sense confirmed all I was saying: John 1:3; Genesis 1:31; Habakkuk 1:13. The simplicity of these truths and the beauty of their logic took root in him, and his atheism drifted off as easily as miasma floats away from a swamp at twilight. His notion of a god who was nowhere gave way to the fact of God, who is here now. He had never really been against God, who is; he had actually been seeking Him. All along he had been longing to know the one true God, and now he did.

Our God is eternal Life and infinite Mind. The nowness of this Life, the hereness of this Mind, are reflected by His idea, man. This is apparent to the honest heart and its twin, the logical thought. Then are we not—in spite of the gusts of evil swirling about— safe and secure in this all-presence?

Because God fills all space, He is here, where you are, in the instant of Truth that is this moment. And His goodness is not a condition of going-and-coming. Just when you might think you are a veritable Job in trouble, Christian Science can show you the nowness of God's power and make you feel the hereness of His presence.

"Job's faith and hope," Mrs. Eddy writes, "gained him the assurance that the so-called sufferings of the flesh are unreal. We shall learn how false are the pleasures and pains of material sense, and behold the truth of being, as expressed in his conviction, 'Yet in my flesh shall I see God;' that is, Now and here shall I behold God, divine Love." ^{Unity of Good, p. 55 .}

This vision is available in the now of this moment, in the here of this place: in your own receptive heart.

Thou, Lord, wilt bless the righteous; with favour
wilt thou compass him as with a shield.

Psalms 5:12