I was about to leave with my wife on a drive of over six hours to a neighboring state to fulfill a public-speaking engagement the following afternoon. For several days I'd had trouble with my back, and as I bent down to pick up the last items to be loaded into the car, it was as if something slipped out of place, and I felt excruciating pain in the lower back. I struggled to the car and got in. My wife did almost all the driving while I spent the time reading and praying, vigorously refuting the agonizing evidence the physical senses were confronting me with, and striving to understand better that my indestructible spiritual selfhood is inseparable from my divine source, my Father-Mother God. Under His divine order there can be no disorder, no displacement, no disruption of right relationships, and I was praying to understand this better. After a few hours there was enough improvement for me to drive for a short time. I felt my wife's strong prayerful support all through this challenging time, as I always do.

When we reached the motel, I kept praying. I knew I was engaged in an activity that glorified God; and I knew I had a right to accomplish it. The night was difficult, however, and next morning things seemed worse. The thought occurred to me that if this was all life had to offer, it simply wasn't worth living. Obviously that suggestion had to be squelched vigorously—Life, God, gives us infinite good, not debility or pain. I needed to make a telephone call in connection with the talk that afternoon and could barely lift the receiver to my ear. It was obvious there had to be a radical change before I could stand for an hour before a public audience about six hours later! Yet I felt quite certain that despite the discouraging physical evidence the assignment would be fulfilled, because nothing had the authority to block the operation of God's law of order and harmony.

With that conviction I started to act as normally as possible. This was in line with an admonition in Science and Health that I've always loved: "We must look where we would walk, and we must act as possessing all power from Him in whom we have our being" (p. 264). The power to act is from God, not from physique. I was soon able to take a shower and get dressed. The grip of pain was loosening, and movement was becoming freer.

I drove alone to the top of a high steep hill overlooking the town where we were staying. The view was spectacular, and I had an uplifted feeling of closeness to God and a growing sense of dominion over the pain and limitation. I watched a young man assemble his hang glider, and although I had to leave the hilltop before the wind picked up enough for him to take off, the very thought of his soaring high above the valley, held aloft on updrafts of air, became a powerful metaphor. It helped me understand more clearly how the spiritual sense through which we come to understand God and our relation to Him does indeed lift us high above the valley of mortal concepts that would keep us bound to the belief that the body is physical and subject to pain and disease. It lifts us to a higher concept of body as actually the embodiment of useful, rightly related, and harmoniously operating ideas that are spiritual rather than material.

My God-given freedom was becoming more and more tangible to me as I returned to the motel. By the time the talk began, I could walk and stand so that no one would notice there was any difficulty. Later that afternoon, while driving to our next destination, I experienced my full freedom. My heart is filled with gratitude to God for this further evidence (for I've had many others) of His healing law of unchanging good.

David C. Driver
Seattle, Washington