Are we waiting? Perhaps for physical healing, perhaps for time to ease the touch of grief, or perhaps for a certain occurrence, considered beneficial, to take place at a certain time, as the man at the pool of Bethesda waited "for the moving of the water" (John 5:3)?
Time is not a healing agent. To dull the edge of memory, to ease the touch of pain through drugs, hypnotism, or the passing of time, is not healing after the way of God's appointing. There is no delay in God's goodness. All of good is everywhere, ever with us, ever present and available.
Where shall we go to find more of God's goodness than is here? If our experience seems to belie the fact of God's ever-available goodness, then let us look within; let us till the soil of human consciousness, spiritualizing our thought until the springlike beauty of God's grace appears to us. The bleakness of our winter of waiting will then be ended, and God's ever-present goodness will be seen in full flower. Truth understood is always fruitful and effective.
John the Baptist came preaching repentance, and of him Christ Jesus said (Matt. 11:11), "Among them that are born of women there hath not risen a greater." Repentance is a transitional state of human consciousness. A higher state of consciousness was typified by the Master, who understood man's spiritual origin and destiny.
That, at this focal point of human history, man's divine origin should be demonstrated in the birth and life of the master Christian was the supremely natural unfolding in human experience of God's eternal law. In subsequent Biblical unfoldment the dual nature of human consciousness is clearly seen, epitomized in Jesus' pointed statement (John 3:6), "That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit."
In the experience of each one of us, the heights of true repentance must be reached before the eternal facts of our own spiritual, real identity dawn in thought. The mortal sense of selfhood, which claims to be the identity of each of us, is the belief of a nature or mind apart from God. The claim of this carnal mind to be beyond the reach of God's goodness is only error's announcement of its own transient and unreal sense of existence. Let us, then, turn our faces to the light of Truth and walk in that direction.
Evil cannot follow us into the glory of God's goodness. From the baptism of repentance, we rise to hear ever more clearly in consciousness the Word of Truth affirming our spiritual sonship. All of us must some day recognize ourselves to be what we really are, always and forever, the sons and daughters of the eternal Father-Mother God.
In reaching out for healings which seem delayed, let us look within. So long as we feel that error is from without, we cannot discern the necessity of repentance. Only when we realize that evil is held in our consciousness by our own acceptance of the belief in its reality do we realize the need of our own repentance and begin to discern somewhat the nature of the lie that would seem to bind us. As the understanding and acceptance of the spiritual realities of being give enlarged horizons to thought, the enriching of human experience is inevitable. The green fields of individual consciousness, grateful and expectant, must grow white unto harvest. Through repentance, our waiting must give way to the active experiencing of present good.
Repentance does not mean the postponement of good, but the unfoldment in thought of the ever-present realities of God's creation. Let us consider the seed planted in the soil. While we wait for the first green shoots to appear, the seedling itself is actively at work pushing its sprouts upward through the darkness. Does it seem that we are in darkness? If so, let us think of the seedling, which, as long as it continues to work and reach upward, naturally and in due season, emerges into light. In such activity there is really no waiting. Growth is going on unseen beneath the surface of the soil.
The spiritualization of human thought which ultimates in repentance is not stagnation. Rather is it activity, buoyancy, and hope assured. It is watchfulness and joy. This waiting, a quality of uplifted thought, is the acceptance of the ever-presence and power of good.
Let each of us who thinks he waits ask himself, "Does this so-called waiting period evidence the increasing discernment of spiritual good?" If so, then let each faithful heart take courage, for the fruition of such increasing spirituality is not only healing but added strength and power, dominion, and unsullied joy. Mary Baker Eddy tells us in "Miscellaneous Writings" (p. 154), "God only waits for man's worthiness to enhance the means and measure of His grace."
Today many wait, as did the man at the pool of Bethesda, hoping for some supernatural or unnatural intervention in human affairs to relieve them from mental and physical suffering. Let us not entertain dormant states of thought and be blind to the presence of the Christ among us. Let us actively await our salvation, learning hourly of Christ, Truth, watching and working that we may recognize the presence of the Christ-spirit. It is not supernatural intervention in human affairs which brings healing, but is, rather, the supremely natural, all-transforming power of Christ, lifting consciousness from spiritual dullness, through repentance, into spiritual regeneration and dominion.
The coming of the Christ to human consciousness is the fulfillment of prophecy. This prophecy does not call for the passing of time before goodness and truth can appear in human experience. Individual and universal salvation does not involve the waiting for a specific moment of time when the forms of matter and material thought will drop away, never again to reappear. Rather is salvation evidenced as one daily and hourly turns away from corporeality to the things of Spirit. It is the continual process going on in the receptive heart. It is the new birth, the upward way—truly a salvation that comes quietly and tenderly in every moment of self-surrender and uplifted consciousness. Jesus said (Luke 17: 21), "Neither shall they say, Lo here! or, lo there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you."
Progressive states and stages of consciousness indicate the falling away of that which is mortal. Mrs. Eddy says in "Unity of Good" (pp. 11, 12): "Jesus required neither cycles of time nor thought in order to mature fitness for perfection and its possibilities. He said that the kingdom of heaven is here, and is included in Mind; that while ye say, There are yet four months, and then cometh the harvest, I say, Look up, not down, for your fields are already white for the harvest; and gather the harvest by mental, not material processes."
