Several years ago, I found myself needing to learn more about God’s nature as the Love that feeds and sustains creation.

At the time, a few of the people where I worked were taking daily medications for problems relating to food. We would often interact with each other in the course of business, and I developed warm friendships with these individuals. My ready feeling of sympathy increased; I was more and more drawn in by their difficulties, and was becoming more aware of television advertisements and newspaper articles relating to the health issues they were dealing with. There was a culture at the workplace of education about and constant awareness of disease, and after a few years I began to notice fear developing in my own thought about food-related troubles.

As time went on, I began to manifest problems connected with food. For one thing, I had begun snacking almost constantly. This was something new to me, and I wasn’t able to stop—it seemed to be an addiction. I would eat wholesome meals, but the need to snack, mostly on sweets, would remain. Also, I was putting on weight and found that my ability to enjoy fun outdoor activities with family and friends became limited by a lack of physical stamina. Another thing was that I was increasingly feeling a lack of energy, focus, and steadiness at work, and was experiencing dizziness at times. These symptoms were strange to me, and I grew frightened. I felt that I hadn’t been alert enough over the years in handling and casting out aggressive food-related suggestions through prayer. 

One morning while in prayer, I saw that I had to be more serious about working toward freedom from these problems. I decided that I must make changes in my daily routine to allow for significantly more time for prayer and study of Christian Science. So I began to focus much more deeply on these words from the last verse of Mary Baker Eddy’s poem titled “Love”: “Fed by Thy love divine we live, / For Love alone is Life” (Poems, p. 7). This became a cornerstone for me in working to gain a clearer, fuller understanding of God’s nature as the constant Nourisher and Upholder of all creation. 

I pondered more than ever before the many instances in the Bible when this was proved: divine Love feeding the children of Israel with manna; rousing and nourishing Elijah when he threw himself under a juniper tree and was tempted to yield to discouragement; enabling Jesus to feed the multitudes and prepare the radiant morning meal for his disciples; and impelling the disciples to break bread with the growing number of new members of the fledgling church in Jerusalem (see Ex. 16:11–31; I Kings 19:4–8; Matt. 14:15–21; Acts 2:41–47). All these experiences illustrated to me the unchanging character of Love, Spirit, as the divine Nurturer, sustaining and feeding all of us, now and forever.

I was thoroughly fed by God’s enriching, pure, satisfying love at every moment.

Another focus of my prayerful work was to weed out of the “garden of thought” some thoughts which were not derived from God, and which were not conducive to progress. Among these were sluggishness, weariness, sadness, and depression. 

I focused on getting to the root of these dark feelings, and started to see that they were simply false beliefs, which would tend to hold me back from realizing the progress I was working to achieve. As I worked prayerfully on this, I found that God was putting more “fight” in me to resist and throw out these false feelings and thoughts. I didn’t need to allow them to enter my consciousness and hang around. 

As I was God’s image and likeness, there was in reality never a time when those errors, or mistaken concepts about food and its influence over the body, possessed or governed me. Gratefully claiming my God-given innocence, I affirmed that those fears were the dreams of dreamers; they never were mine, and I never was the dreamer. I rejoiced in and claimed the fact that all I had ever been, and ever would be, was Life’s joyful, content, steady, and fulfilled individual reflection. A preoccupation with sweets was actually an unsatisfying substitute, a poor replacement for the genuine experience of being filled with the warmth and affection of divine Love. Consistent prayer helped me feel the sweet sense of Love’s upholding embrace and its deeply fructifying, refreshing, uplifting, and energizing action. 

Several times each day I gratefully affirmed for myself that I was thoroughly fed by God’s enriching, pure, satisfying love at every moment, and that this was true not only of myself, but also for all my dear friends at work. I humbly acknowledged that God’s child is planted and established, strengthened and upheld, by Him, and that this could never change. As I prayed in this way, I began to see that this sense of life is the true sense, an awakening that shows us we are filled and embraced by the Divine.

Over the next year and a half, as I made progress in these areas, I began to notice that I was feeling more peaceful at work. There was an inner quietness that stayed with me. When my co-workers talked about their sufferings and problems, I was more immediate and thorough in silently acknowledging their unimpeded relationship with divine Love and their immunity from mortal opinions and beliefs. When a thought of restlessness or a food craving came around, I was able to see it for what it was—“wandering pollen” looking for a sympathetic dwelling place—(see Science and Health, pp. 234–235) and dismissed it with confidence and without fear. 

During this time, I allowed myself one snack between meals, and while I enjoyed this, I found that I wasn’t feeling driven by cravings as before. Sometimes I would forget all about a snack and would be surprised by the arrival of mealtime.

As I made further progress, the physical problems also faded away. The occurrences of dizziness ceased. I felt a new level of equanimity, steadiness, and calm clarity throughout the workday. Also, a fresh sense of physical vigor and bounce returned, and I no longer felt a need to avoid outdoor activities with friends and family. As for the weight gain, that trend was reversed, and my weight normalized as my prayers helped me gradually and steadily put off that false sense of accumulation. I began to feel a distance from those dark memories, and an inner conviction that I was healed.

My gratitude for this healing was boundless—I just felt so thankful to God for this marvelous freedom. And I felt even more gratitude for the feeling of closeness to divine Love that was gained through working out those problems. Mary Baker Eddy wrote in Science and Health of “the unspeakable peace which comes from an all-absorbing spiritual love” (p. 264). I felt as though I had entered a wonderful new realm of this type of deeply established peace, gained through an absorbing realization of God’s nourishing love. I felt a new sense of life, for which I am deeply, deeply grateful.