Article January 29, 1990 Issue

Alive to the goodness of God

Our happiness, health, and well-being depend, more than anything else, on our ability to feel good—to feel and respond to God's reality.

Stephen Gottschalk

Once I told an experienced musician I knew about a healing of a friend whose shattered health had been restored through Christian Science. The healing took some months. Along with much study and prayer, my friend again and again listened to a recording of one piece of music: a vigorous and lovely quintet for piano and strings by Robert Schumann.

"I can well understand that," said the musician, who was also a Christian Scientist. "That piece virtually sings out, 'There is good.'"

She didn't mean that the work was merely pleasant or beautifully composed. Much more than this, true art helps us feel something of that goodness whose source lies outside the creative artist's own thought. The composer—or painter or sculptor or writer—helps open up our own experience of that goodness. But he or she does not create it. In a part of Science and Health discussing sound and music, Mrs. Eddy writes: "Mozart experienced more than he expressed. The rapture of his grandest symphonies was never heard. He was a musician beyond what the world knew."^{Science and Health, p. 213.}

Send a comment to the editors

We'd love to hear from you!

Easily submit your testimonies, articles, and poems online.

Submit

Alive to the goodness of God

We'd love to hear from you!

Sign up for unlimited access