Late one night, suffering from a painful physical disorder, I reached out to God in prayer for healing. I had prayed about the condition many times before, for it had become a recurrent problem over a period of months. That night my prayer took the form of an earnest, wordless desire for deeper understanding of reality. Weary of pain and fear, I yearned to know what was really true of God and man.

As I opened my thought to the truth, the realization came, "Why, good is the reality!" It was as though I had been wakened from sleep. I glimpsed something of the truth that good actually is the reality of man's being, despite material appearances to the contrary. And I joyously accepted this truth deep in my heart. The result was complete and permanent healing that night.

The fact that good is the reality of existence is a sure basis for healing trouble of any kind. Trouble suggests that something other than good, or in addition to good, has actuality. Christian Science, which derives its teachings from divine Truth as revealed in the Bible, helps us to understand the exclusive reality of good and to see how this understanding heals.

The Bible teaches that good is not only the nature and substance of God's being but also the quality and condition of His creation. "O taste and see that the Lord is good," ^{Ps. 34:8.} sang the Psalmist. Speaking directly to God, he said: "Thou art good, and doest good." ^{Ps. 119:68.}

God, the creator of all, is good itself, and all that He creates reflects His goodness. Man, the climax of all creation, is God's very image and likeness. In his true nature, man is totally good and has no characteristic that is unlike his Maker. What God creates is eternal in its goodness. Nothing bad can ever be added to it, nor can a single element of its goodness be destroyed.

Then, what is the apparent source of evil? In the Christian Science textbook, Science and Health, Mrs. Eddy explains it this way: "All reality is in God and His creation, harmonious and eternal. That which He creates is good, and He makes all that is made. Therefore the only reality of sin, sickness, or death is the awful fact that unrealities seem real to human, erring belief, until God strips off their disguise." ^{Science and Health, p. 472.}

Because God is good and creates only good, whatever is not good is not of God and has no real power. Fear, pain, and sickness are never the reality of man's being. Although they seem real to the physical senses, we needn't be deceived. The physical senses do not reveal what is true of man; they merely represent the misconceptions of what the Bible calls "the carnal mind." This so-called mind sees and feels what it believes, and then believes what it sees and feels—and so it is self-deceived. The whole package—mortal mind with its beliefs—is a falsity, an illusion of power where there is none.

God disrobes and dispels this illusion and its attendant unreal beliefs through Christ. Christ, the divine influence of good in human consciousness, is God's means of salvation for humanity. It is the redeeming activity that Christ Jesus demonstrated in his healing works. Christ embraces our present sense of things, where there seems to be a mingling of good and evil elements, with the absolute fact of God's exclusive goodness and man's reflection of it. As we yield to the Christ, falsities fade out and reality comes to light. We experience good where evil seemed to be. We begin to see that actually evil has no reality.

Prayer is the way we draw close to Christ and yield to the fact that good is the only reality of existence. There are many forms of prayer, many ways to pray. Essentially prayer is communion with God. It involves opening our thought to good. It involves quieting fear and stress and getting still inwardly. Prayer involves listening and responding to divine good. And it involves being grateful for good, too.

Sometimes we pray in words. Perhaps we repeat the Lord's Prayer and ponder its meaning. Or in our own words we affirm divine Love's presence with us and deny that evil can touch us. Sometimes we pray with our actions. A positive expression of God-centered joy and love, of courage and conviction, can be an effectual prayer. At other times a deep, wordless yearning for understanding is the prayer that meets our need, as illustrated in the healing mentioned at the beginning of this article. Whatever form our prayer takes, the important thing is the purity of our hearts and our receptivity to the truth of being.

If our need continues, we may find that we must persist in prayer. Perhaps up to now our motive has not been entirely pure. It may be that we have been only partially receptive to the truth of God's goodness. We may be stubbornly—perhaps unknowingly—holding on to some misconception that seems especially dear to us. We need to persist in our prayer until every taint of impurity and selfishness is eliminated and we are 100 percent ready to accept the fact that good actually is the reality of our being.

Christ is continuously imparting to individual consciousness the truth of God's goodness. As we yield to the influence of the Christ and accept good as the reality here and now, we find health and wholeness established where pain and disease may have seemed to be. We experience greater peace and harmony where there may have been dissension and conflict. True sufficiency comes to light more vividly in place of lack.

Even if our trouble has lingered over a long period, we can today awake to the ever-present truth that good is the reality. One Christly glimpse of God's eternal goodness, accepted in our hearts without reservation, can bring the healing now.

Good is the reality!