It was the second or third time I had gone to a Wednesday evening testimony meeting at the Christian Science branch church in my community. I was very interested in the accounts of healing and the spiritual insights that were being shared by those attending. One woman stated simply that if we ever need help or healing, we just have to turn our thought to Father-Mother God, and the right angel message will come. I thought that was the most wonderful thing I had every heard.
The next evening my two-year-old son became ill with a fever. He tossed around in the bed moaning. I sat beside him for a while—fearful. Then I remembered what the woman had said in church, so I left the bedside and walked to the window. I asked the Father for one angel message—for the message I needed in order to meet this need.
This thought, in the form of a question, came immediately and clearly to my consciousness: "Who took care of him before you met him?"
I began to think of man's true, spiritual life, and I was certain that it had no beginning or end. I remembered the Bible verse in Job that speaks about "the morning stars" singing together and "all the sons of God" shouting for joy. Job 38:7. I began to reason that in the truest sense this little one was God's son, not my son, and he, too, was there with the morning stars, shouting for joy!
I was absolutely certain that this dear child coexisted with God, his Parent forever, and that this divine Love had been present caring for him since before "the morning stars." I had only known the child for two brief years! Surely the same power that had cared for him before I met him was still caring for him now, and always would.
This realization, stemming from that one pure message, so relieved my fear that I naturally trusted this little child to His eternal Father-Mother's care. He was healed. When I turned back to the bed, I found him sleeping peacefully, and he woke in the morning happy and healthy as usual. I was so grateful. This was the first time I had applied the truth of Christian Science to care for a need, and it showed me the great importance of turning to divine Mind and asking for the right thought.
The Glossary in Science and Health gives the spiritual signification of Bible terms. Here I found an explanation of the word angels. "God's thoughts passing to man; spiritual intuitions, pure and perfect; the inspiration of goodness, purity, and immortality, counteracting all evil, sensuality, and mortality" Science and Health, p. 581.
God is divine Mind—limitless intelligence, ever present, and omnipotent. Mind is not silent or nonexpressive. When we turn to God, divine intelligence, and ask for help, there is an immediate response. If we ask and then quietly wait, we will feel the presence of Love; we'll receive in our understanding Mind's direction, and there will be healing solutions. These words in the Bible encourage us: "Be still, and know that I am God." Ps. 46:10. We become receptive to Mind as we become still and turn our whole attention to God, good.
Angels are God's thoughts, right
ideas, spiritual truths, the touch of
Love, which give peace.
So, angels are God's thoughts, right ideas, spiritual truths, the touch of Love, which give peace. Science and Health states: "Angels are not etherealized human beings, evolving animal qualities in their wings; but they are celestial visitants, flying on spiritual, not material, pinions. Angels are pure thoughts from God, winged with Truth and Love, no matter what their individualism may be." Science and Health, p. 298.
One insight into angels that has been particularly helpful, even vital, to me is this fact, which was revealed to Mary Baker Eddy—that angels "reproduce their own characteristics." When we mentally entertain an angel thought, a good thought or spiritual truth, that thought grows in our understanding and is expressed in our experience. The angel thought that came to me and brought such an absolute conviction of our Father-Mother God's eternal, uninterrupted care for my son, reproduced that characteristic, and he was healed. Science and Health says: "Spirit is symbolized by strength, presence, and power, and also by holy thoughts, winged with Love. These angels of His presence, which have the holiest charge, abound in the spiritual atmosphere of Mind, and consequently reproduce their own characteristics." Ibid., p. 512. I like to think of Christ Jesus' words as presenting angel messages to me, to anyone who will hear them and think on them. For instance, Jesus said, "I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly." John 10:10. This certainly reveals a message from God, divine Mind, and it is as present and true a fact now as it was then. That divine Life is abundant and that man is the expression of Life is God's message for us, which counteracts belief in sickness and death. When we entertain this wonderful truth in consciousness and hold to it, yield to it, we find that it does reproduce its own characteristics in our present experience.
God, divine Mind, is all good. His thoughts are all good, and are pure and perfect angel messages, which come to us continuously. We only need to be still and receive them.
