Humanity wastes much time in waiting—waiting for some desired event, for a more abundant supply, for a healing, or in waiting for some evil or disease which may be considered inevitable. Waiting is tied up in the belief that events must take place in order to ensure our health or happiness, that our fortunes and lives are inextricably enmeshed in materiality and mortality.
In John's Gospel the account is given of Jesus' healing of the impotent man at the pool of Bethesda. We are told that in each of its five porches "lay a great multitude of impotent folk, of blind, halt, withered, waiting for the moving of the water" (5:3). The popular belief was that if one were fortunate enough to be first to step into the waters when they were troubled by a certain angel, he would be restored to health. And so they all waited.
But the impotent man complained to Jesus that he had no one to lift him into the pool at the proper moment. Forthwith, Jesus annihilated the belief that time, matter, or superstition was in any way involved in Christ-healing. To the impotent man, he said, "Rise, take up thy bed, and walk." And the man did so immediately. He did not need to wait for his body to recuperate. He was immediately cured and strengthened.
We learn in Christian Science that God is omnipotent and omnipresent. We also learn that God is omniactive. Man, the perfect expression of God, necessarily reflects perfect activity, strength, and health. Man's activity and his energies are from God alone, and since God is eternal, action is eternal. In reality, movement and action are not in any way dependent upon time, muscles, or brain. True activity does not await any event, nor is it dependent upon any future order or edict, either divine or human. True activity is eternal, continuous, perpetual.
Mary Baker Eddy affirms in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 283,) "Mind is the source of all movement, and there is no inertia to retard or check its perpetual and harmonious action." Christ Jesus did not see the man at the pool as in reality separate from omniaction. He knew that man, God's spiritual expression, is at one with divine action. This consciousness of the immediacy and everpresence of divine action enabled him to prove to the waiting multitude that one need not postpone healing or await any event to gain it.
In the unfoldment of creation as described in the first chapter of Genesis, God's action is made plain. We read (verse 2), "The Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters." Did God move in the creation of His universe and then cease moving, or did He move only in certain localities? Does He not act and continue to act in the infinite and eternal order of being? No one needs to wait for God to act. He is always active, and His law is the unfailing, everpresent law of our being. God embraces and controls every idea completely.
Divine activity is always harmonious. No discord, no stoppage, can enter the presence of God's omniactivity. The understanding of the truth of God as ever active and of man as God's responsive and active creation operates as a law of correction and healing to every claim of stoppage or inaction.
How should one order his thinking if he is involved in a belief of inactivity or of waiting for supply, health, or happiness to become evident in his life? Surely he should not outline materially how the desires of his heart may be quickly gained. To gain sincerely desirable ends, one must turn to God in prayer. One's desires must be exalted.
If a period of waiting seems involved, one can profitably use that period to establish clearly in thought the truth of eternal perfection. As he realizes that God is perpetually active, that he and all concerned in reality express God's activity, and that activity is spiritual, effortless, and eternally perfect, he begins to see a manifestation of perfect being as God ordered it in the beginning. In so praying, one is opening wide the door for Christ, Truth, to modify the fallacious thinking which led to the belief of discord.
The Christian Scientist need not wait for the waters to move before taking advantage of the blessings God has for all. Mrs. Eddy says (Science and Health, p. 39,) "'Now,' cried the apostle, 'is the accepted time; behold, now is the day of salvation,'— meaning, not that now men must prepare for a future-world salvation, or safety, but that now is the time in which to experience that salvation in spirit and in life."
"The Spirit of God," which moved upon the face of the waters, moves likewise eternally in each individual consciousness. God's manifestation in human consciousness is the Christ, which heals the sick, destroys sin, casts out discord, and maintains man, God's image and likeness, in eternal perfection.
As the planets and stars never cease their harmonious and orderly movements, so does God operate in continuity throughout His infinite creation. The law of ceaseless activity is the law of our being. There is no inaction in Mind, God. Hence there is no inaction in any of Mind's ideas.
The clear understanding that action is God's edict for all being is the practical Truth, or Christ, which blesses our human lives. There is no other power but God, and this omnipotent Mind is revealed by the Christ, Truth, in each receptive individual thought. There is no need to wait for perfection, for activity, for health. God's healing power is constantly available to us, and in reality we are never separate from His power.
