Several years ago, a condition developed in one of my hips that made walking difficult and limited my ability to do simple things like tie my shoes. I couldn’t comfortably lie in bed on either hip because of intense pain. I could have accepted this condition as the result of aging and sought various material remedies, but I wanted to demonstrate that I was more than a material body subject to the aches and pains of aging. I had experienced other healings through prayer in Christian Science and wanted to take that route.
Over the course of several weeks, I prayed to better understand my nature as a perfect, ageless, spiritual expression of God. Several citations from Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy inspired my thought, including the following: “Life and its faculties are not measured by calendars. The perfect and immortal are the eternal likeness of their Maker” (p. 246), and “Mind is the source of all movement, and there is no inertia to retard or check its perpetual and harmonious action” (p. 283). As I prayed with and held to the inspiration of these spiritual truths about my true identity, the pain in my hip and difficulty in walking and bending gradually faded away, and they have not returned, for which I am very grateful.
So what is the lesson here? Aging isn’t inevitable. We all can express youthfulness in our thinking, in our life choices, and in our concepts of age. We don’t have to accept thought models of decline. Mrs. Eddy said: “We are all sculptors, working at various forms, moulding and chiseling thought. What is the model before mortal mind?” (Science and Health, p. 248). Let’s make our model be the spiritual and immortal idea of God—perfect, healthy, and whole!
