Article October 15, 2012 Issue

Seeing the presence of God

Jan Keeler

Several years ago, a friend of mine had a child whose face had a physical deformity. The young mother was heartbroken. No parent wants a little girl to grow up with such a stigma. Rather than accept the dismaying picture that physical sense was presenting, we decided to pray together and see this child as God saw her. We committed ourselves to perceiving God’s presence, His perfect formation, and His beauty right where matter was claiming imperfection and ugliness. 

We exercised our spiritual reasoning, which went something like this: God, Spirit, is everywhere. God’s goodness constitutes all space. Man, being God’s reflection, is spiritual and has only the substance of Spirit, which is totally good. As Spirit’s reflection, this child’s being is perfectly formed. God is the only cause in her life. Malformation could not possibly be the effect of an all-loving God, so we concluded that the appearance of evil could only be a misrepresentation of the child’s true, original substance. 

We also agreed to make demands on our thought to see and acknowledge the beauty of His holiness everywhere. After we practiced this spiritual knowing on a daily basis, the child’s face was perfectly healed, and today she is a beautiful young woman whose face radiates light. 