The deeper lessons of healing

During the course of his ministry, Jesus healed blindness and leprosy, raised the dead, fed the hungry, and saved sinners. His healing acts brought hope to many in his time, and also to those of us reading the Bible record now.

But why did Jesus heal? One reason is certainly because of his love and compassion for those in need. His healings seem to say: “There is nothing that cannot be healed. No one that cannot be saved.” Yet, renewing health and restoring life, while certainly very important, were not the only reasons for Jesus’ healing work. The healings were also, in a way, attention-getters, authority for his messages about God and about divine reality. As the Bible points out, the healings performed by Jesus and the disciples “confirm[ed] the word with signs following” (Mark 16:20 ).

In Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, Mary Baker Eddy wrote about Jesus, “His mission was to reveal the Science of celestial being, to prove what God is and what He does for man” (p. 26 ). Jesus knew God was his Father, and our Father as well, and he wanted everyone to know this. He said that his healing works were really God’s work, and that God had sent him to save the world. He illustrated God’s love in his teaching. For example, in the parable of the lost sheep, the shepherd, God, goes after the lost sheep until he finds it and then “lays it on his shoulders and rejoices” (Luke 15:5, New Revised Standard Version). In the Lord’s Prayer, Jesus affirms that there is a heavenly kingdom, and that God is a powerful and loving Father, who meets our needs, forgives sins, and delivers us from evil. His healings were confirmation that God’s love is “on earth as it is in heaven” (Matthew 6:10, NRSV).

Jesus’ most powerful and perhaps most comforting messages have to do with the nature of spiritual reality. Both his teaching and healing point to a reality without evil, without anything hurtful or destructive, without death. Jesus showed that life, despite outward appearances, is in fact eternal, and that man is not a mortal, but is spiritually immortal. He said to those who believed his teachings, “I give them eternal life, and they will never perish” (John 10:28, NRSV). Jesus proved his words by raising to life those who had died, and by giving clear proof through the resurrection that his own life could not be destroyed. Science and Health states, “Our Master fully and finally demonstrated divine Science in his victory over death and the grave. Jesus’ deed was for the enlightenment of men and for the salvation of the whole world from sin, sickness, and death” (p. 45 ).

We know that Jesus expected his healing work to continue. He said, “Very truly, I tell you, the one who believes in me will also do the works that I do” (John 14:12, NRSV). So as we continue Jesus’ healing work for ourselves and for others, perhaps it’s important that we look beyond individual experiences of recovery to see more about divine reality, asking ourselves, “What more about God and myself have I learned from this healing?”

Mary Baker Eddy set a precedent for such questioning and pondering. After her own healing through prayer alone, she wrote: “My immediate recovery from the effects of an injury caused by an accident, an injury that neither medicine nor surgery could reach, was the falling apple that led me to the discovery how to be well myself, and how to make others so” (Retrospection and Introspection, p. 24 ). She went on to heal others and to write Science and Health, a book about how to heal through prayer.

I recall a healing I had that taught me the deeper lesson that God is always the healer. It showed me that we’re not responsible for praying ourselves into perfect spiritual ideas—instead, we allow the Christ to show us the perfection that already is.

It's important to ask ourselves, "What more about God and myself have I learned from this healing?"

I had been sitting quietly on a stool when my back suddenly went out (see “Intense back pain eliminated,” The Christian Science Journal, January 2011). There was considerable pain as I tried to move. At first I was thinking, “This doesn’t make sense.” It seemed so random, so happenstance. But then there was a gentle correction to my thinking, which I know came from God. It was a clarity that I was never on my own, doing anything on my own. I couldn’t ever hurt myself or, for that matter, be hurt. I was always the spiritual reflection of God’s perfection. God was reassuring me that I was with Him and cared for by Him all the time.

I started to recognize that I couldn’t be hurt, even though it surely seemed that way because of the pain. But I’d just gotten a glimpse of my forever oneness with God. And I knew that was the overriding truth right then. I got up to go on with my work, but kept thinking—praying—about how I was always with God, always expressing His perfection in every action of my being. I could feel the pain lifting, and shortly I could move freely without any pain.

Here are some of the things I’ve learned from pondering the significance of other healings:

• There is of course great gratitude for any healing resolution, but we should also remember to give thanks for the Science that enables healing. God is Love, and healings confirm the Science of His love.
• Since healing prayer affirms the truth of God’s perfect creation and denies reality to anything but that perfection, a healing proves that whatever sin, discord, or disease seemed to be, it was never solid reality.
• Prayer to God does heal, and, because the healing is of God, it cannot be stopped. Because God is universal Love, no one or no condition is outside of the Science of healing prayer.
• Repeated healings through prayer remove fears about sharing the truths about God and man with others. Truth and its healing activity is a universal certainty, a Science.

Each healing we have reveals something to us about God and His creation. In the joy of a healing we don’t want to miss any of the deeper lessons. Taking time afterward to think about and listen to God’s continuing messages to us will ensure that we get the full blessing—and learn whatever it is that God wants us to know to forward our spiritual growth.