I was wrong and I knew it. Although I was miserable, I refused to change my position. Tears flowed as I washed the dishes that warm July evening. I tried to pray, but God seemed far away. In desperation I cried, "Father, help me."

Swift as a human parent's rush to pick up a fallen child, one word flashed before my thought: "Glory." I knew it was an answer to my prayer.

I considered what glory could mean to me. Light and power. Praise. Great beauty. Blessings, not curses. Infinite blessings, poured out for all to see and rejoice in. I remembered that Renaissance artists painted halos above saints' heads. These crowns, meant to represent innocence, were often called glories. How lovely the word and all it stood for!

Then the phrase "to God" came to thought. I recalled what I'd learned of God and His glory. He is the I AM, the only true Ego. God is Love; divine Love is Life, is Mind, Spirit, untouched by materiality or misunderstanding. By now, I was feeling close to God as I had learned to know Him through the study of the Bible and the insight Christian Science gives into the Scriptures.

Then I was led to consider the words "in the highest." I thought how God is supreme over everything—the universe, each individual, every star. On and on ran the ideas of God's great goodness. They filled my consciousness. Quietly came the words "and on earth peace." Here, now, and everywhere, God's peace. Surely, I'd never before felt such peace, nor been aware of how all-encompassing His peace is.

By then, self-will had vanished. His holy peace enveloped me. But even this was not the end of God's tender lesson. "Good will toward men," came the closing words of that verse from Luke (2:14). My heart overflowed with love—not only to the one I'd been in contention with, but for the whole world.

By then, so selfless was my thought, I prayed for the completion of the peacemaking efforts that had gone on in one area of the world for more than a year to end a long military conflict. I understood that all I'd just seen of God's love, wisdom, and blessings belonged to every individual in that troubled conference and society. I saw that fear, pride, and greedy interests must fall before the glory of God's supremacy.

Now I was singing the Christmas hymn "Joy to the world, the Lord is come, / Let earth receive her King" (Christian Science Hymnal, No. 417). For days afterward I walked in holy awareness of the spiritual nature of everything real. Nor was I surprised to learn that the final steps of the peace treaty had been concluded that same night. I never have felt that my prayers alone had accomplished this, but that I had been privileged to see and acknowledge the spiritual facts that underlie and bring about real peace.

I have come to accept the message that angels gave to shepherds at the birth of Christ Jesus as the very theme of Christ: "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men."

Christ is God's wondrous gift, showing us that God is ever present and active, able and willing to bless us. These blessings include both physical and mortal healing as Jesus demonstrated. Such Christianly scientific healing calls for both recognition and acceptance of the harmonious coexistence of God and man.

Human history tends to ignore the facts of man's nature: that each man and woman is actually the pure reflection of God, Spirit, and so is completely spiritual. What we express by reflection of our creator's goodness is our true being. Whatever seems to deny God's perfection, love, and presence would deny our true identity. Such ungodlike traits as fear, anger, deceit, as well as material sensations of suffering or pleasure, would identify us falsely—as either partially or wholly material instead of totally spiritual. But to understand even a little of the fact that God is infinite—and that we live within that infinity—helps us learn of the power and harmony that are ours as God's spiritual expression. In Science and Health Mary Baker Eddy states: "In proportion as matter loses to human sense all entity as man, in that proportion does man become its master. He enters into a diviner sense of the facts, and comprehends the theology of Jesus as demonstrated in healing the sick, raising the dead, and walking over the wave" (p. 369).

Man's spiritual unity with God is law. Disease and discord are not law, but suggestions that man is independent of God. These untruths melt as we admit the spiritual facts and live lives full of the love and purity that show man's inseparability from God. Jesus' understanding of his oneness with God enabled him to show God's love for men, women, and children by healing disease and sin.

Sometimes we may work, pray, and refute material evidence of sickness or inharmonies with great devotion before we find the peace that is called healing. But with "Glory to God in the highest" as the foundation of our spiritual work, the spire of "on earth peace, good will toward men" must crown our prayers.

We find the results not only practical in our own lives, but universal in their application. The angels spoke of "good will toward men"—not just to one individual only. When humbly accepted, this awareness of God's good will toward every individual helps us show others their spiritual identity. And this heals both them and us.

In the Lord's Prayer, Christ Jesus teaches us to pray "Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven" (Matt. 6:10). Isn't this an admission that we are willing to give up our human opinions about all that concerns us? That we are ready to acknowledge God's harmonious will as present reality? Entering the way of Christ and striving to stay within it, we begin to prove God's loving-kindness toward everyone. Then we find that Christmas, with the glory of God's love, can dawn in July—or at any time, in any situation.