A FEW DAYS BEFORE I was to begin an important series of meetings, I just avoided an accident on my bike by carefully placing my right foot in a safe spot as my bike fell. The next day, I slipped and fell on the stairs in my house. This time, I badly injured the same ankle. I had had many healings through prayer over the years—many of them quick, even immediate—so it was natural for me to pray about this situation. Yet this healing didn't come right away. About five days after the first meeting, there still hadn't been any improvement.
At this point I realized that I needed to be more specific in my prayers. I had mostly been thinking about how important it was to be in good shape for the meetings. Sure, I had included concerns about the ankle in my morning prayers, but I hadn't really become conscious of my unbroken relationship to God. I hadn't seen past the common assumptions about accidents to the spiritual fact that my relationship with divine God, who is Love, could never be interrupted.
I went into the bedroom to pray. Immediately, I thought of a quote from Science and Health that describes the role of one of the angels mentioned in the Bible: "Gabriel has the more quiet task of imparting a sense of the ever-presence of ministering Love. . . . The Gabriel of His presence has no contests."1
At that moment I gained a stronger understanding of spiritual law. It was clear to me that there was no contest between spiritual law, which has the infinite power of God behind it, and what is thought of as material law governing the body. With this awareness, my ankle was immediately healed. I realized more than ever that there is only one kind of law, the supreme law of all-powerful Love, and that no material law could possibly oppose it.
This healing didn't come right away.
THIS INSIGHT brought about a thoughtshift that resulted in physical healing. What happened to me is explained by this description of healing in Christian Science: "The effect of this Science is to stir the human mind to a change of base, on which it may yield to the harmony of the divine Mind."2
I saw that my whole life is actually between God and me, not between me and other people's concepts of what's possible for me or for anyone else. There was "no contest" in my thought between the law of God and what people generally believe about injuries. Because God is Spirit and I'm His likeness, my real identity had to be spiritual and whole, regardless of what appeared to be true or what the laws of physics imply. In fact, a purely spiritual identity always has been and always will be everyone's real identity.
How can we see this right now when it appears that we are walking around in matter? Through cultivating spiritual sense, which is our natural ability to see beyond what appears on the surface to what's always true about God and His creation. We begin to see our wholeness by appreciating the spiritual qualities we express. We don't naturally express fear or restriction. We do express calmness, confidence, and freedom. These show our continuous connection with their source—with Spirit. The more we express Godlike qualities, which are already ours as God's reflection, the more we find goodness to be our real self.
God and His thoughts are always with us and for us. They rouse us to see the reality of good, to recognize our spiritual wholeness, and to counteract thoughtfully and thoroughly any notion that opposes our natural freedom.
In this case I had to see that I reflected the fullness of God's nature, all of His attributes, including agility, mobility, and stability. I also saw that there is no validity in anything that opposes the one all-powerful God.
Healings like this help us turn away from deeper and deeper concern about matter, and gain more and more confidence in Spirit as the only power. In this way, whatever is troubling us loses its hold on our thoughts. This, in turn, brings healing to the body.
There really is no contest between Spirit and matter.
