The unselfish world of Christian healing

At times it seems almost as if somebody made up a rule that the world would have more problems than solutions, and that people—good people—would be so overwhelmed by this equation that they would feel helpless to do anything about it. On the other hand, we do keep seeing and hearing about individual acts of caring that move us deeply. A mother on welfare finds a large sum of money and returns it, thereby inspiring others to help her repair her home to a livable condition. Parents of a young woman who was slain establish a scholarship fund to help the people of the community in which their daughter was killed. When we hear of such things, we feel we're being invited to participate in a whole new way of acting, where unselfishness provides new answers—answers that we might have assumed were in short supply.

The practice of Christian healing teaches us a lot about unselfishness. Prayer for the healing of the sick is unselfish not only because of what it requires us to do but because of what it requires us to be—the actual expression of divine Love.

The fact is that healing flows naturally from the kind of unselfish living that Christ Jesus asked of his followers. When we realize that healing stems from our own spiritual awakening and willingness to be alive to what already exists—divine Love and its idea, supreme over all—we find great freedom from the heavy burden of feeling that healing has to come out of some incredible personal effort on our part. In other words, we begin to discover ourselves governed by infinite Love, and when we do, our lives inevitably become more unselfish and more of a healing force in the world.

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