One reason people respond so strongly to the parables of Christ Jesus is that they always are framed in terms of believable human circumstances. As Bible scholars have pointed out, this in itself helps communicate the powerful "good news" of the gospel Jesus brought: that the kingdom of God is literally present, so through obedience and love one can come into the realization of His presence right here, right now.

This could hardly be more feelingly conveyed than in that climactic point in the parable of the prodigal son ^{See Luke 15:11–32 .} when the son, after his long sojourn in "a far country" and after he at last "came to himself," made his way toward his father's house. "But when he was yet a great way off," Jesus tells us, "his father saw him, and had compassion, and ran, and fell on his neck, and kissed him."

There are few such touching moments in all world literature—religious or otherwise. But the amazing thing is that this vividly imagined human situation also corresponds with our deepest intuitions about what it means to experience the grace, the mercy, and the power of Love. For the father didn't wait until the son had crawled every step of the way back with the last ounce of strength that was in him. He ran out to embrace him as his own.

This, of course, happened only after the son, disciplined by the extremity of his experiences, came to himself, recognized his sin and utter helplessness, and began to make his long journey home. But the journey was shorter than he imagined because the father's love was greater than he could conceive. More miraculous still to the son at that point must have been the father's openhearted welcome, so utterly gracious because so humanly undeserved.

Isn't this same openhearted mercy what we feel from divine Love when we are willing to rise up out of the far countries of materialism and sin and make our way to the Father's house—divine consciousness? All true Christian experience attests to the truth so vividly conveyed by this parable: that when we respond in humility and obedience to the power of God, we really feel His all-sustaining love for us. Every moment of treasured spiritual illumination, of upwelling joy that brings healing, has been a moment when we have felt Love's mercy, felt that the Father is coming out to meet us and welcoming us as His own.

Surely we could not feel this happening if God were some blind force or cold abstraction. Being merely passive and unconscious, such an abstract force would be unable to recognize or embrace its creation in all-sustaining love. But this is not the nature of the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob or of the Father of Christ Jesus. And it is not the nature of the God whom Christian Scientists worship. Critics who think and speak otherwise have, as the saying goes, another think coming!

It is true—wonderfully true—that what Mrs. Eddy discovered about the nature of God shows that He cannot possibly be conformed to the limited human models of personality. But this discovery actually opens thought to a fuller experience of the infinite Person, of conscious, intelligent Love, the only source of all that is real.

This infinite Person, Love, never enters into the human dream of existence separate from God, any more than the father in the parable followed the son into the "far country" in which he had found only misery and degradation. But God does know the love which is man's reflection of the love wherewith he is loved. And the glorious certainty that we are indeed known and loved of God becomes more and more real to us as spiritual sense is uplifted to behold the Father's face.

That is why, when we act on the basis of this spiritual sense, we begin to feel God's love for us even now in our present experience. Our spiritual sonship with God is real right now. It is the only fact. And when we act out of the impulsion of that sonship, we are not acting out of the limitations of the human situation. We are acting out of the immense spiritual possibilities of present experience revealed in the life of Christ Jesus. We are therefore learning what it means to be the genuine spiritual man, the very image of living Love. And the God who is Love always recognizes His own.

Mrs. Eddy writes, "This is the doctrine of Christian Science: that divine Love cannot be deprived of its manifestation, or object; that joy cannot be turned into sorrow, for sorrow is not the master of joy; that good can never produce evil; that matter can never produce mind nor life result in death. The perfect man—governed by God, his perfect Principle—is sinless and eternal." ^{Science and Health, p. 304.}

It must be true, then, that this Love—which is the perfect Principle of perfect man—is expressed in active love. And divine Love will not and cannot lose sight of its expression, for that expression is what Love loves! Don't we find the action of Love portrayed in just this way in Luke's Gospel? He tells us that immediately before relating the parable of the prodigal son, Jesus asked his hearers, "What man of you, having an hundred sheep, if he lose one of them, doth not leave the ninety and nine in the wilderness, and go after that which is lost, until he find it?" ^{Luke 15:4.}

What better authority on the action and power of Love could there be than the Master? For Jesus' moment-to-moment representation of God through loving obedience to Him literally shaped the whole course of his experience. To follow him must mean to practice Christian discipleship through which we progressively learn how spiritually natural it is to walk and talk with God, with healing as the result.

True Christian Science treatment, which is always a form of prayer, is most fresh and its results most effective when it is understood as communion with God, as obedient listening. The point where we so often feel assured that healing is taking place is just the point where this communion is most deeply felt. It's then we feel the grace and love of God, feel the Father coming out to meet us, assuring us that man is indeed His beloved child in whom He is well pleased. And the one in need, the one who wants to come home—it could be we ourselves or someone else—is none other than God's man.

It is not, then, by our "much speaking" or metaphysical assertiveness that we are healed. Rather, it is by the grace of God, pouring forth into that human thought which is open to receive it. Keeping thought aligned with the spiritual facts of being is vital in experiencing this grace, which Mrs. Eddy describes as "the effect of God understood." ^{Christian Science versus Pantheism, p. 10.} To understand God involves listening for His voice. It is therefore not what we are trying to know about God but what God knows of us, reflected in us, that brings about the actual healing effect.

Healing, then, comes about through an actual turning to God and finding that He is here. In true Christian healing, therefore, we are not really doing anything to our pains and our fears. Rather, we are leaving them behind—just as the prodigal son left behind the poverty and degradation, which were only the evidences of his temporary acquiescence to the mesmeric suggestion that he could find real meaning apart from his father's house.

We know in our heart of hearts that our real home is not in the "far country" of this misconceived belief in life separated from God. That's why we yearn for and are impelled to seek healing through the power of Spirit in the first place. When we seek healing in this true spirit, which is the spirit of holiness, we find it. For true prayer has holy power to lift us to the point where we feel the Father's embrace welcoming us as His own.