“God rests in action. Imparting has not impoverished, can never impoverish, the divine Mind” (Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 519).

How good it would be if that challenging statement by Mary Baker Eddy were prominently displayed on every vacationer’s suitcase or tog bag. It would especially be good at this time of year when people in the Northern Hemisphere in particular are desperate to stop imparting to others in the office or classroom, and start receiving the beneficence of some summer sun. Often with fierce determination (which belies the quest for peace) they set out for the nearest lake or beach to try to forget the precariousness that runs below their daily existence like an underground stream.

Sometimes it’s the financial meltdown that heightens the desperation. Or health issues, exam results, fear of crime or accident, a job search, or extended hours for less pay. People just want to slow down. Be freed from the tyranny of the urgent. Escape from dependence on humanly designed devices (even though there’s a portable TV, BlackBerry, or MP3 in that backpack).

In this age of “brain-boosting” pills to enhance work or studies, it was heartening to hear of a recent study by the University of Michigan that explored some of people’s escape routes, including the cognitive benefits of interacting with nature. Undergraduate students took contrasting walks in the woods and through the city to learn what they could about “tension restoration therapy.”

Someone even quoted the American poet Wallace Stevens, who once said, “Perhaps the truth depends on a walk around the lake”—aware, maybe, that the spiritual practice of walking has a long history among great wisdom traditions. Jesus and his disciples were great walkers. The trouble is many people walk with an eye on the clock or with a cell phone pressed to their ears. They fail to notice how much more they notice when they’re not preoccupied with multitasking or getting somewhere.

But many play down even that poet’s lake-walk therapy, largely because they have plentiful evidence (including thousands of authenticated accounts published in this magazine) that there are effective prayer-based remedies for stress and overwork that restore mental and physical energy—and, in the process, the body to radiant health.

These remedies are rooted in the understanding that everyone’s true nature is entirely spiritual and rests in Soul, not in matter—a truth that emerges convincingly during any conscientious study of the Bible and Science and Health. In our real being we all possess the calm assurance of indestructible life in God. And there’s no substitute for time unhesitatingly set aside for prayer and listening.

When our vacationing hearts—even if we’re staying on our own back lawn or balcony—open up to what Mrs. Eddy described as the “supremely natural transforming power of Truth” (Miscellaneous Writings 1883-1896, p. 360), we invariably find a happy intersection of need and opportunity, as so often happened with Jesus.

Jesus was the epitome of spiritual peace. He remained inwardly calm in the presence of mental and meteorological storms; stayed undisturbed when hostile opponents sought to destroy him and his message; remained patient when provoked; was compassionate, even when crowds pressed for attention, and the demands of his “work”—his ministry—seemed overwhelming. Opportunity was ever new for him.

Through unceasing prayer, Jesus gained dominion over every threat to his peace of mind. For him, even a crown of thorns “was overcrowned with a diadem of duties done,” wrote Mrs. Eddy. “So,” she urged, “let us meekly meet, mercifully forgive, wisely ponder, and lovingly scan the convulsions of mortal mind, that its sudden sallies may help us, not to a start, but to a tenure of unprecarious joy” (The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany, p. 201).

That joy is within everyone’s reach as they recognize that living in the presence of the divine Mind—as distinct from “the convulsions of mortal mind”—silences the clamor of disturbed thinking as nothing else can. The serenity that characterizes God’s being isn’t merely an absence of inner disturbance. As Jesus plainly showed, it’s a state of mind that has a healing effect on outward circumstances as well.

Jesus’ disciples lived with him yet still sometimes underestimated his God-centered power to help them over their predicaments, too. How often do we do the same? Frequently, it seems the things that bother us have all sorts of causes that we have no control over. Yet many people have found that the more they accept the peace that Jesus promised them (see John 14:27), the less frequently turmoil invades their thinking and their lives.

An undeviating trust in God’s healing power restores calmness, poise, and serenity. They, too, can “rest in action.” This is not only comforting, but entirely natural and normal. And it doesn’t take a vacation or a walk around the lake to discover that.