Article September 22, 1997 Issue

Don't wait to be healed

Nancy Louise Loose Ranks

Recently a friend told me that she felt she could not be healed of a long-standing problem until after she passed on. "You know," she said, "we either work things out here or hereafter. I have not worked this problem out here, so I guess I just have to wait until the hereafter to get it solved." I smiled but firmly told her that she was in fact one of God's perfect ideas, and this truth, applied in her own life, would heal her right now. She didn't have to wait until "hereafter." To me, the hereafter is any time, place, or point in life after the time, place, or point in life where I am right now! I explained that if you think about the logic, even one minute after right now is hereafter."

As we talked I shared with my friend one of my favorite references to "here and hereafter" in Science and Health. Speaking of the way our lives change as we learn to understand God as our only Life, the book declares: "It is a warfare with the flesh, in which we must conquer sin, sickness, and death, either here or hereafter,—certainly before we can reach the goal of Spirit, or life in God" (p. 324). To me this citation isn't saying that we might have to die to be healed of some kind of sin or sickness; rather, it is telling us that we must continue to pray and study and to see that healing and salvation are a present possibility.

We can awake from the mistaken belief in death and illness to the knowledge that we are right this very instant, here and now, healthy and vigorous. There is no requirement that we die first in order to understand or to accept the fact of life as God's perfect, spiritual idea.

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