Article August 5, 1996 Issue

Expect the angels to be specific

Alexis Deacon

Some time ago I suffered from recurring headaches. A complete healing of this trouble took about four years. During those years I often called on a Christian Science practitioner to treat me through prayer. Every time I called I ended up describing the same pain, the same symptoms. But to my amazement, the practitioner would never respond with the same spiritual truths. No routine, formulaic answers.

Instead, each time she offered fresh, inspired insights about God's love and care for me and about my identity as His painless, perfect child. Her expectancy was that God's angels—or "God's thoughts passing to man ..." as Mary Baker Eddy describes angels in Science and Health (p. 581)—would tell us exactly what we needed to know in order to restore harmony, and this expectancy has stayed with me years after my healing.

When praying about a situation, I find it important to make sure I am expecting the angels to meet my need precisely. It is helpful to ask myself if I am thinking that God's angels are impractical and far-off. If the answer is yes, then I must be thinking that God is impractical and far-off, which is not true since He is real, practical, ever-present Love. The Bible says, "We love him, because he first loved us" (I John 4:19). And it portrays God as asking: "Am I a God at hand, saith the Lord, and not a God afar off? Can any hide himself in secret places that I shall not see him? ... Do not I fill heaven and earth?" (Jer. 23:23, 24)