welcome December 6, 2004 ISSUE

The gift of health

Patricia Kadick

I remember a time in high school when I was sick and missed the bus ride on basketball game night. The coach had taken me home. Scarlet fever was sweeping the school's halls, and kids were being dismissed right and left.

In the pockets of memory I glimpse Mom, calm, gentle. And see myself, the next morning, completely well. What had happened? We'd prayed. The only epidemic in our home that night had been praise of the Divine. An expectant prayer that God's gift of health belonged to me. That was the end of the outbreak at school as well.

No, a flu epidemic is not an occasion for joy. But today when I hear the word epidemic, my thoughts turn to healing. I even picture hordes of children, the adult me included, hand-in-hand, singing and skipping across a sunny grass-covered hill.

Is that because of healings like the one I had that night? To me, stories in the Bible and ideas from Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy are like sustenance — giving insights that tell me freedom comes from looking on the right side. Not a Pollyanna view, but a reasoning that says God's care is enough — confidence that God's gifts alone are in epidemic proportion. Gifts such as gratitude, innocence, intelligence, creativity. And the gift of health.

As my confidence in the accessibility of these spiritual gifts has deepened, I've become healthier — and felt protected against any kind of dis-ease. Perhaps more important: I know that my rejection of anger, fear, confusion, actually contributes to the breakdown of anything in my life that isn't good.

This line in Science and Health tells me that we can, and must, help prevent epidemics by first taking charge of our own thinking: "We must destroy the false belief that life and intelligence are in matter, and plant ourselves upon what is pure and perfect. ... Matter does not express Spirit" (pp. 222-223 ). And this verse from Isaiah inspires me to accept that challenge, "[You] shall go out with joy, and be led forth with peace: the mountains and the hills shall break forth before you into singing, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands" (55:12 ).

And I clap my hands.

Patricia Kadick
Staff Editor

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