Article January 7, 2019 Issue

Playing fair by divine Love’s rules

Ellen Clark Anderson

What does love have to do with curing a cold? Plenty, as I found through an experience I had some years ago. I had been playing volleyball with a coed adult league for a few weeks, and I hated to miss a game. But one morning I woke up feeling as though I were getting a cold.

Turning to God for help, I prayed and listened for His healing thoughts. I affirmed that God, who is infinite good, hadn’t made me sick. Then I read the Bible Lesson for that week from the Christian Science Quarterly, as well as articles from The Christian Science Journal. Still, I didn’t feel well. But I recalled something a friend had told me: The opposite of a cold is “a warm.”

Who wouldn’t want to feel God’s warmth and love? I sure did. I was familiar with passages on love in the Bible, such as this verse from First John: “Anyone who does not love does not know God, for God is love” (4:8, New Living Translation). I also read what Mary Baker Eddy says in “A Rule for Motives and Acts” in the Manual of The Mother Church. The sentence that captured my attention was, “In Science, divine Love alone governs man; and a Christian Scientist reflects the sweet amenities of Love, in rebuking sin, in true brotherliness, charitableness, and forgiveness” (p. 40).

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