Article November 17, 1997 Issue

A glimpse of God's omnipresence brings healing

Nancy Louise Loose Ranks

Sometimes young children are taught in Sunday School that "there is no spot where God is not." This easy-to-remember rhyme helps them understand God's all-presence, or omnipresence. And because it conveys the sense that God is always with us, this little saying can help calm children's fears and anxieties, and bring healing. Of course, this rhyme isn't relevant only to children. In Science and Health the same idea is rendered, "Where the spirit of God is, and there is no place where God is not, evil becomes nothing,—the opposite of the something of Spirit" (p. 480).

Recently I studied that sentence when a friend asked me to pray for her for healing of lung congestion caused by a severe cold. This problem had been keeping my friend from sleeping well, and she was feeling quite fatigued. As I prayed I could feel God's presence with me and my friend. Of particular interest that evening, though, was the explanation I found in Science and Health of omnipresence as Spirit "filling all space" (see pp. 109–110). It became very clear that since we are, in actuality, spiritual—made in the likeness of God, Spirit—and since Spirit fills all space, my friend could not, in reality, be affected by congested lungs, or anything of a material nature.

As I continued to pray, I could see that there was no spiritual basis for any illness. I extended my prayer for my friend to the world and affirmed the impossibility that suffering of any kind can have power or reality, since Spirit fills all space. Because God, Spirit, is omnipresent, there simply is no room for Spirit's unlikeness—whether that unlikeness appears in the form of sickness, injury, hate, violence, or fear.

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