Healed of a muscle strain

José Sanchez

I’ve always been a soccer fan. Some years ago, I started playing with a team of guys, all of them born in a country that has feelings of rivalry with my home country, Costa Rica. I would go to play soccer with them wearing the colors of my country’s flag—blue, white, and red—while most of the other players wore their country’s colors. This rivalry made it difficult for me to play on the team. At times they would deliberately make long passes to me so I couldn’t get the ball.

Then, in one of the practices I had a painful muscle strain in my leg, so I decided to stop playing and just watch the practice while putting my thoughts in order. I had already felt that something was going on that needed to be corrected in my thought.

I began to pray with the idea that we are all equal in God’s sight. God’s love is universal and available to all. As I held on to that line of reasoning, I realized that the strain in my leg had a lot to do with the tension between the team members and me, because we were of different
nationalities.

Based on the fact that God is Love, and loves us all equally, I rejected the notion that there could be anything that could keep us apart, or that there could be any cause for conflict. I prayed to see that we are all children of the same loving God, a God who sees us all alike, sharing the same love. Mary Baker Eddy writes, “Love is impartial and universal in its adaptation and bestowals” (Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 13 ).
This way of thinking brought some relief to my discomfort.

I didn’t play soccer for about two weeks, and during this period I was able to resolve any conflicting feelings within me. The muscle strain healed quickly as I changed my way of thinking, because the solution is always in thought.

When I pray, I usually start thinking of the wholeness of God because He is everywhere, omnipresent. I realized that if I accept this, I cannot accept at the same time the existence of another discordant power. Love for our neighbors moves us to change our thinking about them. Prayer has led me to see that there is no help in seeing our neighbor as anything but the image and likeness of the same God who made us all. True brotherhood consists in seeing that we are individual, unique expressions of divine Life, because we are all children of the same God and Father. We could say that we are all wearing the same team T-shirt!

Later, I got the idea to go and again play soccer with them wearing a T-shirt with the colors of their national flag. As you guessed, they gave me a warm reception, and that was the end of the problem.

Today, I still play soccer with them from time to time. And the team members and I have become good friends. Another good result is that the team coach, who is also from the other country, has been helpful to me in other ways. It is marvelous to see how such a simple change of thought, with love and understanding, not only healed a physical condition, but also a relationship problem.

José Sánchez
Englewood, New Jersey, US

About the author

This piece was originally written in Spanish and published in The Herald of Christian Science.

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