If you need healing, please don't take time to read this editorial! Take just a moment of eternity.
Timeless healing sounds a little like the description of a cure that has stood the test of time. Yes, those who look to God for blessing could easily identify prayer as an ageless way to find answers to the pressing problems of mortality. But we can probe even more deeply to uncover the timeless nature of divine healing. Then prayer will become increasingly effective. In fact, we will heal as Jesus did, and as he wanted us to do.
Christ-healing is timeless healing because it is free of time. The Bible hints at timelessness: "Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and to-day, and for ever." Heb. 13:8. From earliest Biblical days, the healing touch of the Christ has been felt. Even today, it's still a tender presence, uplifting and blessing. If you want to feel this gentle power, acknowledge it as ever-present in your consciousness "yesterday, and to-day, and for ever."
Timeless healing involves a "fasting" from mortal measurements. Jesus healed because he didn't measure people with mortality. His measure of an individual was Christliness.
Imagine what it means to be free of time. Catch just a glimpse of this freedom and you will find true healing. Mary Baker Eddy used a number of words and phrases to throw fresh light on the nature of time. See Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 595 . Here are two of them: (1) mortal measurements; (2) matter. Most people think of healing in the context of time. That is, it takes time for problems to develop (even difficulties that arrive suddenly take at least a moment). And it takes time to care for them. But timeless healing involves the forsaking of time. A "fasting" from mortal measurements, a denial of matter. Jesus healed because he was so filled with love, so endowed with the Christ. He didn't measure people with mortality. He didn't characterize them as objects of matter. His measure of an individual was Christliness, the eternal nature God has instilled within each of us.
Take a simple example of how differently most of the world approaches healing. Suppose some kind of discord develops. Perhaps a physical problem. The world's way of dealing with such human flaws involves time. And what does that mean? Moments, even hours, of dwelling on matter—measuring and emphasizing it. Typically people assess their level of discomfort—light or severe. Maybe they measure temperature, a heartbeat, blood pressure, how long they've endured the condition. Mortal measurements are an affirmation of matter. Classifying it, observing it, and often fearing it. The human mind says of this so-called substance, "I can measure you. You define me. You are my reality. You are rooted in the reality of time." But the Science of Christianity lifts us radically out of the quagmire of measuring matter to see ourselves as spiritual and Christly, the same "yesterday, and to-day, and for ever." Timeless.
The Christ is an eternal, elevating impulsion in consciousness.
This compassionate presence would have us affirm Spirit. It reveals Spirit as immeasurable, unconfined, infinite. When we prayerfully acknowledge, with love and conviction, that boundless Spirit is our true substance, mortal limitations and inharmonies diminish. Sometimes quickly. Healing through Spirit leads us to yearn not so much for freedom in matter, as freedom from matter. Time-based healing would have us emphasize getting better from here on forward. Timeless healing would include getting better from here on back! That's right, real freedom doesn't happen if we simply think of our existence as on a timeline where discord has a beginning point and prayer is based on persuading God to get us out of trouble by tomorrow. We are liberated when we begin waking to realize that we aren't on a timeline at all. We've never been in matter. We can't and won't allow ourselves to be measured as if we are a condition of mortality. We are Christly. Real identity is right here in eternity, in Spirit's timeless allness.
Eternity is not something that happens in the future. It isn't endless time. Instead of the lengthening of time, it is the elimination of time. As Mrs. Eddy so deftly put it,"... time is no part of eternity." lbid., p. 468. Her challenge to time has, to me, a ring of what St. John the Revelator described—an angel showing that as we see all creation coming from Spirit, we'll demonstrate "that there should be time no longer." Rev. 10:6. There will be no delay in our life to expressing God's perfection.
Once I had a hacking cough that persisted for a long time—at least that's the mortal measurement I assigned the condition. I just couldn't seem to shake it. Then one day while I was praying about the unreality of time, I felt a sense of freedom from mortality, a kind of immortality, or heaven. It was as though the nurturing influence of the Christ liberated me from the confines of time as I pondered the powerlessness of "mortal measurements" and "matter." The cough suddenly stopped. I believe time stopped. I glimpsed and felt a sense of eternity. In that moment, God became more real to me than the cough. A spiritual view of reality overtook mortality. I could cough in time, but not in eternity!
A time-based approach to healing struggles within matter. Matter is the human mind's self-limiting measurements. It is an outline of life's restrictions. Timeless healing, on the other hand, relinquishes matter. It yields to real being as the unbounded, unrestricted, unlimited expression of Spirit. When we love God as our reality, a measure of Christliness emerges in our consciousness and is portrayed in our life as a sense of well-being, a feeling of joy and inner peace, a conviction of our true innocence and purity. We don't lose our substance, but we begin living it on a permanent basis.
When you treat a situation or condition through prayer, think of timeless healing. You're not stuck in matter or mortality, always trying to measure it and enhance it. You are expressive of Spirit's endless harmony because you are forever cherished as God's flawless child. You simply have no time in your life for anything but eternity!
