Holding on to images of failure and evil obstructs progress. It dims hope for our individual prospects, as well as for the future of our churches and society at large. But we can resist mental occupation by doom scenarios. Divine Mind is ever ready to pour images of progress and good into the consciousness of anyone reaching for something better than what they see on life’s surface.
To illustrate, the Bible tells of a woman with a long-standing disease, “an issue of blood” (see Luke, chap. 8). Imagine her mental state. She’d spent all her money on physicians and found no cure. No doubt she’d prayed, too—not only for healing, but for forgiveness. Society then believed disease and other calamities were results of sin, punishments from God. (Today’s conviction that they result from human errors or physical forces beyond one’s control isn’t much more encouraging). On top of this general condemnation, the woman’s particular condition made her a social outcast.
Still, despite all her previous failed attempts to find help, on this day she pushed through a crowd to reach Christ Jesus. Fear and shame didn’t stop her. Consider this: Maybe they couldn’t stop her because at that point her faith was no longer in simply finding a cure or in winning forgiveness for some error. Maybe she’d exhausted that faith. And maybe that very loss, those “failures,” had actually made her ready to accept a much greater gain—the realization that God’s love was right there, was all that was real, and all she wanted and needed. She touched only the hem of Jesus’ clothes, but that tiny faith in the wholeness Christ sees in everyone healed her.
