Once, while trying to decide how to paint a flower, a famous American artist said, "I paint what I see." Georgia O'Keeffe's contemporary works fill canvases and our eyes with vivid, striking images. She painted what she saw. Her main effort, then, was to make what she saw appreciable to us. It was interesting to learn from a documentary chronicling her life that Georgia O'Keeffe was not exaggerating or magnifying her images just for the sake of art. She saw things the way she painted them —and that artistic vision transformed them.

How often do we paint the landscapes of our lives with the limiting, depressing colors of despair because we are unaware that what we see depends largely on what we think? We tend to see our lives the way we think they are.

Christ Jesus saw spiritual reality because he understood the truth of being. He called reality "the kingdom of God." ^{Luke 17:20, 21.} The master Christian perceived that kingdom here, now. Mankind, thinking materially and seeing materially, sees this kingdom of God as faraway. Christ Jesus' lifework, which culminated in sublime sacrifice of self, made what he saw appreciable to humanity.

Mrs. Eddy saw, and she devoted years of deepest consecration to writing the Christian Science textbook, Science and Health, in her effort to make what she saw appreciable to mankind. In humanity's long procession, many have caught glimpses—even if only momentary snatches—of spiritual reality, the kingdom of God. "One moment of divine consciousness, or the spiritual understanding of Life and Love, is a foretaste of eternity," ^{Science and Health, p. 598.} Science and Health explains.

How can we see what the Revelator called "a new heaven and a new earth" ^{Rev. 21:1.} —that reality where there is no pain or sorrow, night or dying, and where nothing can enter that defiles? In the beautiful chapter called "The Apocalypse," the Christian Science textbook asks, "Through what sense came this vision to St. John?" The answer: "Not through the material visual organs for seeing, for optics are inadequate to take in so wonderful a scene. ... The Revelator was on our plane of existence, while yet beholding what the eye cannot see,—that which is invisible to the uninspired thought." ^{Science and Health, pp. 572–573.}

Through inspired thought, spiritual sense, we can learn to see spiritually. Occasional bursts of prayer, directed at blocking the evil we are facing, will not eliminate evil if we see evil as real and powerful, something to battle, something to fear. Prayer that rises from spiritual sense, however, lifts us to see that evil cannot exist in God's kingdom. Then we begin to understand that evil does not have to be made unreal. It is always unreal.

This understanding comes from "the Spirit of truth," ^{John 16:13.} as Christ Jesus called the Comforter. Jesus declared, "When he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth." "The Spirit of truth" breaks the chains of matter-based thinking and seeing and shows us why earthly woes have not the substance or power we always assumed. As we learn that what we see and experience is determined by what we understand as reality, we begin to watch what we accept into our thoughts and lives.

As spiritual sense takes precedence, we see that we are not pawns of fate and heredity, even though we may have felt this way for a long, long time. Nor are we destined to eke out a miserable, mortal existence that will sooner or later result in a release called death.

Learning through Christian Science that God is the Father-Mother of all, we begin to see that God is our Life, entirely apart from flesh. In truth, our being is already spiritual; it does not become spiritual as a result of prayer. Prayer does not transmute matter into Spirit. We learn that the only governing force is God, good, and His government produces only harmony. God and man are inseparable as cause and effect. And we learn that we are loved. Everyone's beloved, spiritual identity is God-protected and whole, safe, and good.

Like a despairing beggar living on the fringes of society, who suddenly learns that he is the son of the king, we return to our Father-Mother's house through Christ, Truth, alone. And we also find that, in reality, we never left. Our individual recognition and growing understanding of eternal, divine sonship may be overwhelming. This sonship is sacred. It can never be touched by mortal ignorance. Truly, we begin to see ourselves and others as we really are: spiritual and perfect.

The daily practice of our eternal sonship demands regeneration and brings it into our lives. This requires humble endeavor to see and acknowledge God, who is Life, Truth, and Love, here —now. It involves a heartfelt willingness to put aside anything that would blur true vision. Whatever is not in accord with divine Principle must be dropped; whatever is not in line with divine Love will be shed. Fearful, limited, matter-based thinking increasingly will be let go.

Science and Health has this to say about Christ Jesus' ability to see spiritually as compared with materially-minded individuals: "His senses drank in the spiritual evidence of health, holiness, and life; their senses testified oppositely, and absorbed the material evidence of sin, sickness, and death." ^{Science and Health, p. 52.}

Jesus and those around him lived in the same earthly place, but where they stood mentally was vastly different. How often do we absorb the material evidence of human anguish, war, burdensome poverty, corruption, incapacitating illness, and multiple deformities etched upon helpless lives? None of us has to go very far to hear and see evidence of these every day. No neighborhood is exempt. Few families remain untouched. Earth's sorrows call for our prayers for healing.

In Twelve Years with Mary Baker Eddy an experience is related that illustrates somewhat this true sense of seeing. A mother, whose daughter was suffering from a painful boil, took her two children to Mrs. Eddy's home for an Independence Day visit. The mother prayed for the child but seemingly to no avail.

After the speeches, Mrs. Eddy sat on the porch and greeted the many visitors as they passed by. The woman's children preceded her—and she tells what she saw. " 'I wish I could make the world know what I saw when Mrs. Eddy looked at those children. It was a revelation to me. I saw for the first time the real Mother-Love, and I knew that I did not have it. ... It is difficult for me to put into words what I saw. This Love was everywhere, like the light, but it was divine, not mere human affection.

" 'I looked at the people milling around on the lawn and I saw it poured out on them. I thought of the various discords in this field, and I saw, for the first time, the absolute unreality of everything but this infinite Love.

" 'When we got back to the hotel, there was no boil on my child's head.'" ^{Irving C. Tomlinson, Twelve Years with Mary Baker Eddy (Boston: The Christian Science Publishing Society, 1966), pp. 61–62.}

True spiritual discernment heals. And as we recognize this, we understand better why Jesus healed instantaneously. The Bible tells us: "Behold, there was a woman which had a spirit of infirmity eighteen years, and was bowed together, and could in no wise lift up herself. And when Jesus saw her, he called her to him, and said unto her, Woman, thou art loosed from thine infirmity. And he laid his hands on her: and immediately she was made straight, and glorified God." ^{Luke 13:11–13.}

Are we learning to see that man is forever free from infirmity?