Article October 15, 2018 Issue

Healing and the ‘stretched out arm’ of God

Judith Hedrick

In the Old Testament we read about the “stretched out arm” of God. When the children of Israel were enslaved in Egypt, God promised them, “I will rid you out of their bondage, and I will redeem you with a stretched out arm, and with great judgments” (Exodus 6:6). And the prophet Jeremiah wrote, “Ah Lord God! behold, thou hast made the heaven and the earth by thy great power and stretched out arm, and there is nothing too hard for thee” (Jeremiah 32:17).

The arm of God that redeems and saves, and that we read about in the Scriptures, isn’t the physical force of a physical God. Instead, understood spiritually, the “arm” of God symbolizes the spiritual and universal power of divine Truth and Love, which brings healing to human consciousness and reveals the kingdom of heaven on earth. For many of us, the bondage of today may take different forms than that which the children of Israel faced in Egypt, but now as then, it can include the slavery of materiality and sensualism that would weigh down and darken human thought, keeping us from discerning the freedom and harmony of spiritual reality. But no matter what bondage we face, God is present and ready to heal with His stretched out arm.

When struggling with a sense of loss and separation relating to several things in my life, I awoke one morning with a painful right shoulder. By the end of the day, I could barely move my arm. Knowing God to be a great help in difficult situations, as I had experienced many times in the past, I turned to Him for help. Even as I was in pain, overwhelmed, and afraid, I also had the gentle thought to let God lead me. Through Christian Science, God shows us the way to freedom. Mary Baker Eddy wrote, “Follow the directions of God as simplified in Christian Science, and though it be through deserts He will direct you into the paths of peace” (The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany, p. 361).

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