The past several months have afforded numerous opportunities for me to learn more about God and my unbreakable relationship to Him.

I’m especially grateful for two physical healings that seemed particularly challenging. In each instance, with the dedicated support of a Christian Science practitioner, healing was realized – fully and completely. The first healing, which involved a protracted claim of pain that inhibited movement, took place over an extended period. The second healing, which involved a different claim, came quickly. In both instances, healing came when it became clear that I wasn’t in a situation removed from God, but was always at one with Him, fully His expression, and subject only to the law of Principle.

A third healing came at the end of a recent overseas trip with my wife. I had become quite ill the night before we were to return home. As with the other two healings, that claim was handled quickly and effectively with the help of a Christian Science practitioner when I realized that I couldn’t be separated from God.

My growing understanding of my relationship to God has also helped in my work involving the governance of an organization unrelated to church. Earlier this year, I became aware that several members of that organization had engaged in dishonest and unjust behavior. While not directed at me, their behavior was upsetting and detrimental to the institution. I found it very hard not to resent acts designed to give the carnal mind what it wanted at others’ expense.

Late one night, just before going to bed, I felt myself struggling with a sense of darkness while thinking about the situation. One of Skip’s editorials brought the light. In “Thaw out the frozen feelings,” Skip writes, “The effect of scientific Christianity is to melt frozen feelings by making evident what belongs to man. Christian Science shows that man is not the limited, flawed mortal being he often appears to be; man is nothing less than the witness, or the image, of the divine Love which is God” (Sentinel, January 21, 1991). I realized this had to be true of those who were behaving badly as well as of myself. The editorial brought out the necessity of loving one’s neighbor, but what changed in my thought was the realization that this love is inevitable f man is the image of God. It wasn’t something I had to gin up: It’s God who is doing the loving, and it’s native to man to know this and to reflect what God is giving. This was not a matter of loving mortals who were behaving badly. It was breaking through to see God’s allness and man’s innocence.

Suddenly, the verses of several hymns came to thought and lifted me out of the morass: “I walk with Love along the way, and O, it is a holy day” (Hymn 139) and “while merged in Love, what hold has hate” (Hymn 48). And especially Hymn 179, which begins, “Love one another, – word of revelation; / Love frees from error’s thrall, – Love is liberation. / Love’s way the Master trod; He that loves shall walk with God. / Love is the royal way.”

I am increasingly grateful to be learning more of Christian Science, a process set in motion through class instruction with our teacher. To realize even a bit more of the great truth of being is to experience the kingdom of heaven here and now.