'CHECKING IN' WITH SPIRIT, NOT MATTER

HENRY CAREY

A few years ago, I experienced a kidney stone. Intense pain hit me as I was driving a long distance alone in a remote part of Colorado. My initial reaction was to think I'd been poisoned somehow.

I called a Christian Science practitioner from my cellphone. She told me I couldn't find myself under "attack" from any source, because God, good, was in control. She gave me the sense of peace and comfort that allowed me to undertake the rest of the journey home on my own.

Over the next few days, the pain didn't abate. It reached a point where I said to myself: "I have asked and asked in prayer, What do I need to know to find relief and healing? What is the truth that God knows about me? Why can't I find an answer?"

The thought immediately came to me to open my thinking to the Christ. I'd learned in Christian Science that the Christ is the communicator revealing God's thoughts to man. Mary Baker Eddy wrote in Science and Health, "Christ is the true idea voicing good, the divine message from God to men speaking to the human consciousness" (p. 332). The Christ is the light, the illuminator of Truth. With this thought of the Christ, the pain simply evaporated.

But that was not the end of the experience. The next morning, I was again afflicted with debilitating pain. During that day, I realized that the first thing I was doing every morning was "checking in" with my body to determine the state of my health. I immediately saw that instead I needed to consult God only as to the condition of my health and harmony. As I read the Christian Science Bible Lesson, I came across this passage: "Realize the presence of health and the fact of harmonious being, until the body corresponds with the normal conditions of health and harmony" (p. 412).

It had seemed very normal, from a human standpoint, to check with my body for information on how I felt. But I realized that I'd been much like Adam in the Bible when God asked, "Where art thou?" (Gen. 3:9). Science and Health's interpretation of Adam's response is, " 'Lo, here I am, looking for happiness and life in the body, but finding only an illusion, a blending of false claims, false pleasure, pain, sin, sickness, and death'" (p. 308).

To me, it could easily have meant, "Here I am, looking for health in the body." With that, I realized that my health and harmony could be found only by looking to God as the source of goodness, not by looking to the body. A few minutes later, I eliminated the stone (or physical manifestation of the mental condition), and all the pain departed.

I dearly love the Christ, and I am so grateful for its presence in my life.

HENRY CAREY
SANTA FE, NEW MEXICO, US

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