I knew there was going to be a lunar eclipse that night. But I hadn't planned on staying up to watch it. When I found myself still awake at one o'clock in the morning, the time of the full eclipse, I decided to get up and take a look. Wrapped up warmly in a blanket, I went out on my deck on that cold November night and saw one of the most beautiful sights I had ever seen.
Just the bottom edge of the moon was visible, but what took my breath away was the vividness and number of visible stars. I saw constellations I hadn't thought about since my childhood, when my dad would point them out to me. The illumination from the stars alone cast a bright glow over my backyard. I didn't stay outside very long in that 30-degree weather, but the glow of inspiration stayed with me for a long time.
Just before getting out of bed that night, I had been feeling troubled over an article in that day's newspaper. It had to do with spiritual healing for children and the efforts of state legislatures to repeal provisions recognizing the right of parents to choose to rely on spiritual means instead of conventional medicine to heal their children. Would the world ever understand the healing power of God, who is ever-present Love? The lessons I learned that night healed my fear and helped me to deal with the question from the standpoint of prayer.
Just as the sky was filled with what seemed an infinite number of stars, my thought began to fill with gratitude for the illuminations of Christian Science, which give ever-expanding views of God's perfect spiritual universe. Many have found that such a glimpse of spiritual truth has healed the most stubborn forms of sin and sickness. The fact is that since God is Spirit, the universe of Spirit must be purely spiritual. We live in this universe right now as God's loved ideas, eternally cared for and protected. There aren't two universes, one the perfect, spiritual creation of God, and the other an imperfect, trouble-filled material universe.
As I looked up at the night sky, it occurred to me that the beauty and order I was seeing pointed to the magnificence of God's spiritual universe. What we call physical beauty and order hint at what is spiritually true. The star clusters that night, like pinpricks of light, barely visible because of their distance from earth, symbolized to me a promise: there would be a time when everyone would see Truth for what it is, however distant it might seem from the world's material vision right now. I remembered the Bible promise "They shall all know me, from the least of them unto the greatest of them, saith the Lord." Jer. 31:34. I clung to this promise.
I thought, too, of the approaching Christmas season. How few, at the time of Jesus' birth, realized what his life truly represented. I have been gaining a growing understanding of Jesus' example as I study and ponder the spiritual truths of God and man found in the Bible. Along with this book, I study another, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy. It helps me to understand the spiritual laws underlying the teachings of the Bible and to apply them through heartfelt prayer. These two books open up a universe of ideas and bring practical solutions to humanity's problems. What I'm learning is gradually lifting me above the earthly belief that life exists in a matter-based universe or that history began with Adam and leads to the struggle of his progeny to survive in the face of despair and hopeless confusion.
For all time, Jesus' life refuted these false theories and showed that Spirit is the only substance of man and the universe. Next to the marginal heading "The immortal birth," Science and Health states: "As material, theoretical life-basis is found to be a misapprehension of existence, the spiritual and divine Principle of man dawns upon human thought, and leads it to 'where the young child was,'—even to the birth of a new-old idea, to the spiritual sense of being and of what Life includes. Thus the whole earth will be transformed by Truth on its pinions of light, chasing away the darkness of error." Science and Health, p. 191.
Angels announced the birth of Jesus to the shepherds, who came in humility to the manger. Wise men followed a star to find the young child, and through their spiritual vision they glimpsed that they should not make known to King Herod where the child was. See Luke 2:8–18 and Matt. 2:1–12 . The star signaled that a new order had begun, that a new way of perceiving and living life had come to humanity's rescue. Mrs. Eddy writes, "The star that looked lovingly down on the manger of our Lord, lends its resplendent light to this hour: the light of Truth, to cheer, guide, and bless man as he reaches forth for the infant idea of divine perfection dawning upon human imperfection,—that calms man's fears, bears his burdens, beckons him on to Truth and Love and the sweet immunity these bring from sin, sickness, and death." Miscellaneous Writings, p. 320.
The spiritual illumination that led the way continued to manifest itself in the life and ministry of Christ Jesus. Through his unparalleled earthly mission—through healing sickness and sin, feeding thousands with a few loaves and fishes, raising the dying to life, and in his own bodily resurrection and ascension above material perception—he proved the power of Mind, God, over all material conditions. Every seeker can today follow the light of Christ, of divine Truth's power and presence, which Jesus understood and demonstrated.
This power and presence was felt by a young mother who witnessed the healing of her little boy, feverish with an ear infection. Christmas was several days away, and the family had plans to visit with relatives who in the past had expressed concern that prayer instead of medical intervention was the choice of treatment for these parents. The mother called a Christian Science practitioner for treatment for her son. The practitioner agreed to pray for the child and came to visit him. She and the mother prayed to see more of his spiritual identity as the image and likeness of God. His true nature couldn't be influenced or interrupted by material beliefs. They held to the fact that Love, God, governs all, and so the child couldn't be outside the atmosphere of Love, where he was eternally cared for. When the practitioner arrived at the home, the child was curled up in a blanket on the sofa, but soon he was up playing. This seemed to be a turning point.
After going to bed that night, the mother was wakened by the child in the early hours of Christmas morning. Up to this time she had been very fearful, but now she held to the spiritual truths she and the practitioner had been praying with. Even though the child's physical appearance seemed to be the same, she felt a great sense of peace overflow her thought, and she knew that all was well. The child quickly responded to this uplifted spiritual consciousness, and two days later all symptoms had completely vanished, and he was well. The family was free to have happy visits with several relatives during the remainder of the holidays.
The practitioner and the mother rejoiced together that it was one of their most meaningful Christmases. They had realized in a small degree that the eternal Christ, the spirit of God which Jesus so fully demonstrated, was still appearing to human consciousness to bring healing.
It is the nature of Truth to reveal itself. This revelation is a divine initiative, which nothing can obscure or prevent. It is truly only a question of time when the fears and doubts concerning healing by spiritual means, imposed by the belief that man lives in a material body and is subject to disease and sin, will be eclipsed by Truth itself. Even so, Truth is now and always speaking to human consciousness, leading it out of mistaken material theories and laws.
Jesus had great compassion on those burdened by the belief that physicality was man's highest hope on earth. This belief manifested itself as palsy, an issue of blood, a withered hand, adultery, resistance to his teachings, and even as death itself; but Jesus' higher understanding of God enabled him to see through all that. He recognized that the error was not in the individual but in the world belief of life, substance, and intelligence in matter. His healing works were proof of God's presence right where the false belief had seemed so real.
Today, many are disappointed with the empty promises of materialism and are turning to alternative systems of healing. They are seeking a better way, as the shepherds and wise men in Jesus' day were seeking for something higher. We can cherish the promise for ourselves and others that the revealed Truth, which has come to this age through Mrs. Eddy's discovery of Christ's eternal Science, will find its way into every heart and lead it out of a night filled with darkness and doubt into the consciousness of eternal light and love.
