Depend on God!
When we're willing to depend only on God, we'll be pleasantly surprised at the healing results.
It was a school vacation and I had hundreds of pages of Moby Dick to read, a paper to write, and a nasty earache. I didn't know, when I called a family friend to pray for me, that I was going to be healed of smoking as well as the earache.
My friend certainly had a better understanding of me than I had of myself. His thought, shining with the light of Christ, with a perception of God's unconditional love for man, accepted neither sin nor suffering as a part of my real, God-created identity. Maybe this explains why, after briefly mentioning the earache, I began a painful confession of an addiction to cigarettes. I included a number of reasons why I would like to be free of the habit, an important one being that I was studying Christian Science. To be a church member, one needed to be free from alcohol, drugs, and tobacco. I realize now that I had never really understood the why of this requirement.
Surprisingly, my friend gently teased me! He didn't seem very impressed with either my "sophisticated" habit or the feeling of guilt. His teasing lightened my heart, weighted, as it was, with devotion to "a pack a day."
Then he asked, "How long are you going to let a cloud of smoke come between you and God?" I supposed he meant that to a degree I had tied my sense of well-being to tobacco instead of to divine Love. Smoking seemed relaxing, sophisticated, and very "in" with my friends. Was he implying that it was more reliable and rewarding to look to God for satisfaction and poise and acceptance?
He showed me the importance of right motivation—of stopping the habit because of my relationship to God. He was talking about my own, and everyone's, original, spiritual sonship with the creator. In this relationship the Father blesses His offspring so that the offspring may glorify the Father by expressing His pure, perfect nature. This is the spiritual reality of God and man, and it impelled me to compare worldly glamour with spiritual glory. There was really no comparison.
Looking back, I realize that it was more than my friend's words that healed me; it was the power of God, of Truth itself.
Looking back, I realize that it was more than the friend's words that healed me; it was the power of God, of Truth itself, which was evident in the life he lived and the love he expressed—reflected in his absolute assurance of God's love for man. Christian Science had everything to do with this unwavering faith and unselfed love.
The study of this Science, through the writings of Mrs. Eddy, anchors the learner deep in the message of the Scriptures. That message of healing love reached its crescendo in the life of Christ Jesus. Yet both before and after this man of God walked with mankind, others caught glimpses of Christ, Truth, sufficient to experience its transforming power.
My glimpse of the healing Christ woke me up, especially when my friend asked if I could picture Jesus walking down the street smoking a cigarette. I realized that the freedom and integrity of the Christ, which Jesus so fully lived, could not fit into the same picture with enslaving tobacco. As Jesus taught: "No man can serve two masters .... Ye cannot serve God and mammon." The Christ excludes demoralizing addiction.
In The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany, we find these words of Mrs. Eddy to church members: "Already you have advanced from the audible to the inaudible prayer; from the material to the spiritual communion; from drugs to Deity; and you have been greatly recompensed. Rejoice and be exceedingly glad, for so doth the divine Love redeem your body from disease; your being from sensuality; your soul from sense; your life from death."
When the power of the absolute unity of God and man is discerned in prayer, it silences the allure of materiality and reconciles mankind to greater dependence on God. Then, at least some measure of dependence on materiality falls away. We are made ready to participate in the healing mission of Church.
Referring to church "built on the divine Principle, Love," Mrs. Eddy says in Science and Health, "We can unite with this church only as we are new-born of Spirit, as we reach the Life which is Truth and the Truth which is Life by bringing forth the fruits of Love,—casting out error and healing the sick." Most certainly the "fruits of Love" had been visited upon me that day.
It was my friend's own commitment to the mission of Christ that made him ready to minister to me. He was a Christian Science practitioner, and he spoke about my changing my viewpoint and of demonstrating my oneness with highest Principle, God. He referred me to the innocence and purity of my true spiritual nature and refused to dignify addiction as having any relationship at all to God's man.
Once my thought was stirred from its material base, I was receptive to the power and presence of God, which acted to eliminate the belief of pain (earache) as well as pleasure (smoking) in matter. What was really special was that this power was so gentle that the second healing was not at first noticeable to me.
When I returned to college a week later, my roommate remarked rather admiringly, "You've stopped smoking." Surprised, I replied, "I have?" Then, quietly, with gratitude that years have never diminished, I added, "Yes, I have!"
My newfound freedom included the freedom to participate actively in church—to make my own outward statement of unity with Spirit as God's man.