The promise of immortality here and now

A while back, I was up all night quite ill. As morning broke, I asked my wife to read to me that week’s Bible Lesson from the Christian Science Quarterly. One passage from Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy really spoke to me. Echoing passages from Paul’s letters to early Christians (see I Corinthians 15:54 and II Corinthians 5:4), it states, “Every quality and condition of mortality is lost, swallowed up in immortality” (p. 215). It had felt as if I were being swallowed up by this illness, but this passage made me realize that I had it backward. Evil can’t swallow good. Good swallows up evil. The immortality of God, divine Life, was present, and I could trust the healing power of God. I began to feel the comforting, gentle power of divine omnipotence envelop me, and in a short while I was well.

As usually happens in a healing brought about through Christian Science, what took place was more than a physical cure. Specific spiritual facts had come to thought, revealing more about God and about man’s present immortality as God’s child. Each day we have the opportunity to realize that God is divine, unending Life. This Life gives us, God’s offspring, the ability to overcome sin, disease, and limitations of all kinds by realizing that our true life is not biological or psychological but divine Life’s immortal expression.

Right now, the power of divine immortality is active in the lives of all of us. This promise is not about an event at the end of life but about what happens throughout life here and now. It’s about swallowing up the fear of disease with trust in God, silencing the cacophony of physicality and sin with peace and purity, and revealing our true selfhood as spiritual, not material. This brings healing.