The pastor of the church down the street from the one I attend has written a book about his early experience in the ministry. The building where they were meeting was in disrepair. The surrounding community had serious problems with drugs and prostitution, which frightened away people who had attended the church. One of the ushers was stealing from the collection. Some of the women in the little choir were getting pregnant out of wedlock. And there were days when even he didn't want to come to church.

Low attendance. Little money. Discouragement. Serious discouragement.

Battling unsuccessfully with a cold, he took some time off to pray. He prayed long and hard for many days. And then, while sitting on a fishing boat, he had a remarkable sense that God was present with him and that God would always be with Him. This simple Christly sense of divine Love restored him. In fact, it literally turned his life around.

When he returned home, the church building was still in disrepair, the community was still greatly troubled, the collection still didn't balance. But there was a fresh fire in him, and step by step with God's help he found ways to make his ministry more effective. That healing touch of Christ stayed strong in his life. ^{See Jim Cymbala, Fresh Wind, Fresh Fire (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1997) .}

Mary Baker Eddy was also a pastor who faced extreme difficulties and knew Christ's healing touch. In her primary work, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, she quotes this proverb: "Man's extremity is God's opportunity" (p. 266). When we open our hearts wide to God, we find Christ, the evidence of divine Love. Of course, we don't have to be desperate to find Christ active in our life. This divine message and activity of Love is eternal, ever present, always available. As Paul said so succinctly, "Christ in you, the hope of glory" (Col. 1:27). The strength, the confidence, the inspiration, the health, the happiness, the goodness, that God imparts to man can be experienced here and now, no matter where here is.

Jesus came to many who felt cut off from God and His healing power. The plague of Jesus' day was called leprosy. Jewish law required lepers to keep utterly separate from others. The ravages of disease, combined with isolation and the dread others felt toward them, had to have been more than most could bear.

After Jesus had spent some time preaching the gospel that the kingdom of God is at hand, a leper approached him and asked for his help (see Mark 1:40–45). It's as though he had said, "If what you say is true, 'thou canst make me clean.'" Jesus replied simply, "I will." And then he crossed that great gulf that had appeared to separate that man from God and humanity. He reached out and touched the leper and healed him of that plague.

To the Jewish community, Zacchaeus, a tax collector, was a moral leper (see Luke 19:1–10). He, too, had been shunned and isolated from his community. Yet something in him drew him to the Master. He had to see this man Jesus. But because of all the crowds, he couldn't see him, so he climbed a tree in order to watch him pass by. When Jesus saw Zacchaeus, he urged him to come down quickly, because he wanted to have dinner with him at his house.

While others were busy questioning how a so-called "holy man" could enter the house of such a sinner, a moral revolution was taking place in Zacchaeus. Jesus' Christly nature, embracing Zacchaeus in spiritual love, cleansed him from sin. Zacchaeus became a new man with new motives and a new purpose in life.

In Science and Health, Mrs. Eddy notes that "the divinity of the Christ was made manifest in the humanity of Jesus" (p. 25). She writes further, "He [Jesus] was inseparable from Christ, the Messiah,—the divine idea of God outside the flesh" (ibid., p. 482). Hence the title that honors him: Christ Jesus or Jesus the Christ.

Christ saves, delivers, restores, gives health and life, resurrects. Note that this is all in the present tense. This saving and healing activity of God did not disappear from human experience with Jesus' ascension—or at any other time. Paul asked the great question, "Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?" And we can add to this, Can time, or any modern circumstance, any new phase of sin, any new form of inhumanity, separate us from the love of Christ? Paul's answer stands fast: "Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us" (Rom. 8:35, 37).

Today as yesterday, Christ's great love bridges over whatever would seem to cut us off from the grace of God. It lets us know right down to our core that God is with us. No sense of pressure, discouragement, or despair; no claim of addiction; no sense of grief or helplessness; no moral failing, is beyond the healing and restoring touch of Christ. As Jesus taught, if we seek it, we will find it (see Luke 11:9). The healing touch of Christ gives us a new life.

Christ's appearing doesn't always come to us in the way popular thought expects, though. Humanity often expects great things to occur with majestic fanfare and flourish. Yet the baby Jesus was found by the shepherds, lying in a manger. Even the resurrected Jesus appeared to two of his disciples in an ordinary way as they walked on the dusty road to Emmaus. What was spiritually great appeared humanly meek. But the hungry, searching heart finds its Saviour.

The pastor down the street felt Christ's presence on a fishing boat. I first felt it alone in my dorm room at Christmastime. My legs were burning with a severe rash; the discomfort seemed unbearable. I had had good results from the practice of Christian healing during the past couple of years, but no amount of prayer at this time was bringing healing or relief. I remember praying somewhat desperately, Father, what am I supposed to do? There was a Christian Science Hymnal on my bed. I picked it up, and it fell open to these words:

More than twenty-five years later, it is still easy to recall the wave of love I felt flow through me at that moment. The fear and pain were washed away. I felt nothing but heavenly Love. This active consciousness of God's presence stayed with me for several days beyond the actual physical healing. In fact, its effect has been indelible.

How has Christ touched your heart? How has Christ's love affected you? If you have experienced it, it's important to recall it. For it's a living source of spiritual power in your lives. If you haven't had that experience yet, remember those words from that hymn.

The healing touch of Christ is not distant. It is present in us all. We don't have to wait for it to come. It is here. We don't have to earn it. We are already worthy in God's sight. Whatever in us longs, Zacchaeus-like, to see the Christ, will find it. Christ heals us, washes us clean, restores us, and blesses us. The healing touch of Christ is present now. It is the promised Immanuel, the evidence of God with you and me, now and always.