FRESH STARTS AND HEALING

HOW APT THAT THE CHRISTMAS SEASON, with its spiritual basis of goodwill and peace on earth, should be followed by an urge for fresh starts. People get motivated to set a new course toward a better way of living in the new year. It's a time of opportunity, a time when we feel that change is possible.

But without some awareness and understanding that it is God who has made us ready, that God impels and enables us to find the progress we desire, we will likely find that our best intentions have run out of steam by the end of January. In order to make the most of the impetus gained from the inspiring focus of Christmas, we need more of the Christ—the spiritual truth of man's unbreakable connection with God.

In the Preface to Science and Health, Mary Baker Eddy drew attention to the connection between the desire for a better life and the recognition of the Christ. "To those leaning on the sustaining infinite," she began, "to-day is big with blessings" (p. vii ). The term "blessings" implies so much more than just the things that people think they want. It suggests an expansive goodness that regenerates and transforms human experience; good that is not just temporal and passing, but rather divine and lasting. And where but in the "sustaining infinite" could such transforming goodness be found? Only Spirit can usher in the kind of significant changes that bring healing and uncover our true nature as made in the image and likeness of God.

The sentences that follow in that opening paragraph of Science and Health bring us back to the import of the Christmas story, with its wakeful, watchful shepherds catching the first glimpse of "the human herald of Christ, Truth, who would make plain to benighted understanding the way of salvation through Christ Jesus, till across a night of error should dawn the morning beams and shine the guiding star of being." And this isn't surprising. Jesus was the living example that each life is essentially and substantially spiritual. He gave a model for how to think and act in order to have that fresh, abundantly vital life we so naturally desire.

Jesus' teachings are like signposts to where real progress is, to what it looks like in human experience and how we can claim it for our own. Progress resides in the expression of God's own good qualities, something we naturally love and respond to. Jesus made it clear that anyone can claim it for his or her own because we're all the sons and daughters of God. We have a familial relationship with divine good, with Love, with the deep Truth of life. And this means that we can do the same things that he did—we can find Spirit to be supreme and healing to be natural.

Maybe you've resolved to more consistently put this blessed and blessing Christian principle of healing into action in your life. Or maybe you're striving to overcome through prayer some challenge that has seemed impervious to change. In either case, it's God's own nature that lifts and supports you.

As I deepened my own study of Christian Science, one of the first things I found was that it was actually very natural to become a better healer. Divine good, in the form of fresh, inspiring ideas, would come to light as I spent time thinking about God's nature. God's spiritual qualities became substantial realities to me. More and more, I saw them in myself and in others. And this acted like pebbles thrown into a pond—the ripples spread outward. Those inspired ideas, uncovered in the process of turning my own life over to God in prayer, were often exactly the thoughts I needed as the day went on. Sometimes they met a personal need. Other times they were just what I needed to help someone else.

The Bible's book of Revelation speaks of God's promise: "Behold, I make all things new" (21:5 ). The more we take into account the powerful presence of the divine nature, the more opportunity we find to express it ourselves and see its practical effects. In practicing Christian Science healing in Jesus' way, the challenge is to keep a fresh, spiritual view of things. This is what prevents us from falling into a merely conventional sense of helping others, one that doesn't lean wholeheartedly on the "sustaining infinite."

Healing comes not from merely repeating spiritual truths (to yourself or another), hoping they will resonate in the human mind, but from recognizing the regenerative presence of divine Truth and Love as the only Mind. God is Truth—supreme, always true. But to have what the Apostle Paul called "the mind of Christ" (I Cor. 2:16 ) means being awake and aware of what God is doing in the here and now. This is recognizing that discord is impossible and unsustainable, because it denies God's omnipotence.

A man I know became interested in Christian Science after seeing his wife healed of a long-standing illness through prayer. He was grateful for her recovery but disinclined to believe in any system that he couldn't prove for himself. He began reading Science and Health, though, and testing its ideas against the daily challenges he encountered. There were numerous small successes, and failures that perplexed him but made him more determined to understand what was going on. As a mathematician, he looked at his experience as a sort of equation, in which principles had to lead to repeatable, predictable results. He felt his study was teaching him a lot about the nature of God as infinite good, but how to rely on prayer was still unclear to him.

One night he felt himself getting progressively ill. In the middle of the night he knew he had to do something about his condition; he suspected the symptoms were serious since they involved his heart. Without waking his wife, he thought through his options. He could try to get medical care (which was problematic because their house was miles from the nearest town, up a mountain road), or he could treat himself spiritually as he'd been learning in Christian Science. The symptoms became quite strong, and at that moment, he said that he felt he'd come to a "mental crossroads"—either he trusted that the divine good he'd been catching glimpses of was real and omnipotent, or he had to admit it wasn't. He decided to whole-heartedly rely on God's care, and immediately felt a great calm.

What he loved and was inspired by—the power of Spirit—dawned on him as simply the way things really are. Right then, the physical crisis passed. It was a turning point for his faith. He later said that he'd been so impressed by the spiritual sense of life that had welled up within him that he'd thought to himself, "Whatever happens, I have to live with this truth!" He'd found, as Mary Baker Eddy explained, that "the great miracle, to human sense, is divine Love, and the grand necessity of existence is to gain the true idea of what constitutes the kingdom of heaven in man" (Science and Health, p. 560 ). Divine Love and our apprehension of its presence opens a door in thought through which the light of God's goodness can stream, revealing the intact, perfect substance of His creation.

For this man, it had never been a matter of figuring out how to "use" Spirit, or about fixing a material condition with spiritual thoughts. In his time of need and through his earnest desire to know what was true, he'd witnessed the very present and practical good that God is. To see it and accept God's goodness as real is to know it, and to know that you're part of God's good, intact creation.

Jesus' teaching and healings defied conventional wisdom. To find the healing power and regeneration he inspired, we have to follow him. He said, "He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do; because I go unto my Father" (John 14:12 ).

That work is to abide with the living Spirit and not settle for a mortal, limited sense of good. It's based on knowing that we're all in Love's infinite embrace and can afford to live from this basis. This understanding, which is at the heart of the Christmas season, should be celebrated all year round. We are always ready for a fresh start with God. Nothing is more worth recognizing and cherishing in our thoughts and lives.