Article July 9, 1990 Issue

The "intensive care" God gives us

God's care for His children is strong, and we are able to experience it.

Isabel F. Bates

We hear so much these days of people who experience physical crises of one kind or another and end up in "intensive care" in the hospital. But intensive care need not be thought of as referring just to the section of a hospital where the most intensive medical attention is given. In fact, considered apart from its medical connotation, the phrase is a very apt description of the expert and loving care that God gives us and that we become conscious of when we are spiritually attuned to Him. Taken in this spiritual sense, intensive care can bring to light images of blessing rather than suffering.

I haven't always thought of it in this positive way. Rather suddenly, I became very ill and was put in "intensive care" in a Christian Science sanatorium where the twenty-four-hour nursing care would, I knew, include no medical attention. Instead, this facility would, provide a nurturing atmosphere conducive to prayer and healing, where daily necessities would be lovingly attended to.

Even as a child in the Christian Science Sunday School, I had learned always to turn to God in time of need. It was my strong conviction that there had to be a supreme power, or primal cause, underlying all genuine reality. It made sense to me that this power, whom I thought of as God, must exist not as an unfeeling mechanistic force but as infinite divine Mind, Spirit, as absolute veritableness, or Truth. He must be intelligent, therefore constructive, therefore good; and therefore He could not be responsible for the discords and miseries inherent in material creation.

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