Arriving early one Sunday morning to support prayerfully the service of my local branch Church of Christ, Scientist, I noticed gulls rising, floating, and soaring outside the church edifice as the gentle wind currents actively lifted them.
This reminded me of what my mother had taught me about God when I was a child. She explained that God, Spirit, was like the wind, which couldn’t be seen but whose effects could be observed in ripples on the water, leaves rustling in the trees, or flowers dancing in a field. From a very early age, I learned to look for evidence of God in the smile of a friend or in a gentle hand reaching out. Now the movement of the gulls reminded me that God is present and active right here and now.
It also reminded me of what our Leader, Mary Baker Eddy, referred to as “the healing promise and potency of a present spiritual afflatus” (Retrospection and Introspection, p. 31). She explains further: “It was the gospel of healing, on its divinely appointed human mission, bearing on its white wings, to my apprehension, ‘the beauty of holiness,’—even the possibilities of spiritual insight, knowledge, and being” (p. 32).
