Love removes doubt and fear and imbues us with the faith and understanding that meet every need.
By: Elaina Simpson, C.S.
I had prayed about a severe rash on one of my hands. It was beginning to inhibit my daily activities and take all my attention. I prayed consistently and trustingly, yet my hand wasn’t getting any better. It appeared that my prayers weren’t working. While I knew that I wasn’t at fault for having this problem—as a child of God I was innocent—I began to wonder if there was some way that I could raise the standard of my prayer.
The Bible gives an example of Jesus pointing out the need to do this in the account that begins with him walking across a stormy sea to the ship where his disciples are struggling with fear. At Jesus’ invitation, Peter leaves the ship and starts to walk toward Jesus on the water. But, intimidated by the strong wind, Peter becomes frightened and, beginning to sink, cries out, “Lord, save me!” Jesus immediately reaches out and catches him, saying, “You of little faith, why did you doubt?” (Matthew 14:30, 31, New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition). The encouragement to overcome doubt with greater faith in God is a call to raise the standard of our prayer.
Prayer in Christian Science is not formulaic, yet there are elements that prayer or treatment typically includes. For example, the Christian Science textbook, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy, tells us we should always begin our metaphysical treatment by allaying the patient’s fear. We also learn the importance of addressing belief in a power or mind opposed to God—any false beliefs that would mesmerically pull us away from God and therefore need to be removed from thought.
I had done these things, but as if checking boxes. One day, as I was listening for God’s direction about how to pray about the rash, the words “God loves you” came to thought. I realized that what I’d been missing was the love behind my prayer. I needed to remember God’s love for me and let Love, God, lift up my prayer and my thinking as a whole. I had to know God’s love for all of His creation and understand that I was included in that love. And I saw that because God loved me, He would never have given me, or any of His dear children, any kind of problem. Anytime the rash became evident, I refuted the possibility of any reality in discord or disease, mentally affirming, “God loves me.”
Quoting the Bible’s book of First John, Mrs. Eddy writes, “ ‘God is Love.’ More than this we cannot ask, higher we cannot look, farther we cannot go” (Science and Health, p. 6). And in an earlier paragraph, with the marginal heading “God’s standard,” she says, “God is Love. Can we ask Him to be more?” (p. 2).
It’s divine Love that lifts our prayer to a whole new level. Love removes doubt and fear and imbues us with the faith and understanding that meet the need. In light of the above quotes, I had nothing more to ask in my prayer other than to understand, know, and feel that God is Love and that God loves me. Seeing more of God’s love revealed opportunities for me to forgive, to let go of condemnation, and to reach for a higher standard of thinking.
The next day I was still praying about the rash when my other hand slipped as I was opening a tin can, causing a deep wound between my thumb and index finger. I immediately called a Christian Science practitioner to pray for me, and she recommended that I have the wound attended by a Christian Science nurse. The bleeding stopped immediately, but I had lost feeling in the thumb, and the suggestion came that it would be stupid not to get stitches. But I felt comfortable addressing this through prayer alone, affirming that my real nature is spiritual and completely out of harm’s way. I realized that it didn’t matter how severe the injury seemed to be; through Christ, the true idea of God, I could quiet fear and rise in prayer to focus on God’s love.
When I arrived at the Christian Science nursing facility to have the wound cared for, I apologized to the Christian Science nurse for what she was about to see. But when she removed the wrapping, in place of the gaping wound there was just a small line that looked like a paper cut. My jaw was on the floor in awe at God’s healing love. The Christian Science nurse properly cleaned and wrapped the hand and sent me on my way with helpful information about how to care for it.
Over the next few days, each time using that hand seemed difficult, I affirmed that God loved me. By the end of the week, I was able to use the hand with no trouble, and the feeling in it had returned. The rash on my other hand had completely cleared up, too.
If you ever struggle to find healing, you can affirm—not as some sort of mantra but as irrefutable fact—that God loves you. You have the humility to yield to this love, which removes fear. Even if fear comes in the guise of embarrassment, skepticism, doubt, stress, a lack of faith, or over-thinking, God’s love is bigger. Sometimes, a problem might claim a lot of our attention. But God’s love raises our prayer from trying to fix a difficulty to perceiving and accepting the truth of our unchanging spiritual wholeness as the image and likeness of our creator, God (see Genesis 1:26, 27). We find that divine Love is the only cause and the only effect and that we can trust the resolution to Love.
There are many different ways we might find ourselves inspired to uplift our prayer. God, Spirit, shows us how He has made us—completely spiritual. Nothing can separate us from Spirit or make us material, so we shouldn’t be looking to heal a physical condition with our prayer. Prayer doesn’t alter what appears to be wrong with us but reveals what’s right with us.
Praying in this way, we won’t succumb to the suggestion that we are unfaithful or that our faith is shaky and that therefore we have problems. God’s love shows us our freedom from discord, which is no part of His all-good creation, and brings to light the infinite peace, dominion, and harmony that our divine Father-Mother gives to all. And after we are healed, we can know that God’s child never went through a hurtful experience. God, Love, knows His children as untouched by evil. Whatever seems to be wrong is unreal and temporal and can never touch what is eternal, real, and right. Rather than being faithless, we are filled with the Love that lifts our standard of prayer, bringing healing to light.
~ Elaina
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