Severe cut quickly healed

The Bible teaches that “God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble” (Ps. 46:1). I have always liked the use of that word present. The idea of God always being right with us wherever we are is very comforting. Science and Health describes God as being omnipresent, meaning always and everywhere present. And in the spiritual interpretation of the Lord’s Prayer, where Jesus prayed, “Thy kingdom come,” Science and Health states, “Thy kingdom is come; Thou art ever-present” (Science and Health, p. 16).

I had the opportunity to rely on this concept of God’s ever-presence a couple of years ago while working in my vegetable garden. Late one afternoon, I realized the okra needed cutting. (You don’t pick okra; you have to cut the pod off a thick, fibrous stem.) I was using a sharp new pair of garden shears in my right hand, while holding the stem with my left. Since it was late in the day and I was still wearing my sunglasses, my visibility was not as good as it might have been. Without knowing it, on one cut I missed the stem and caught the tip of my ring finger in the shears. An immediate jolt of pain ran all the way up my arm, and I was afraid that I’d severed the tip of my finger.

Since I’ve experienced and witnessed many healings in the past where reliance on prayer was the sole source of help, I’ve learned the value of focusing my thought and attention on God, rather than on the physical picture. So I resisted the impulse to look down at my finger and instead looked up, both literally and figuratively. Tucking my left hand under my right arm where I couldn’t see it, I prayed to be open to knowing what God knew about me right then. I’ve learned that the physical senses cannot be relied upon to tell us what is true about our identity as a spiritual idea of God.

In “the scientific statement of being” in Science and Health, which begins, “There is no life, truth, intelligence, nor substance in matter” (Science and Health, p. 468), Mary Baker Eddy gave a wonderful series of absolute truths that establish the spiritual identity of everyone. What came to me to do in the garden was to start reciting this statement out loud in its entirety. I didn’t care if the neighbors heard me. I was practically shouting it, partly to overcome my fear of what the condition of my finger might be. I have never focused so hard on the meaning of those words. I knew that my help had to come through a clear understanding of my relationship to God, and through seeing that there was no truth in matter—no reality in accident, injury, or pain. I insisted on understanding their unreality, knowing that they had nothing to do with God.

After reciting the statement once, I began again. About halfway through the second recitation, I realized that the pain in my left arm and hand was gone. It didn’t just begin to ease off or become less intense; it completely disappeared. I was overjoyed with gratitude to God, but still refused to look at my finger. I was holding strongly to the fact that the only truth about me was being communicated by Spirit, my true source, and that therefore there could be no truth in any report from Spirit’s opposite, matter. As a result, I didn’t feel the need to check my finger to confirm healing.

It was almost as if I was experiencing a separate reality from the one the material senses had been communicating a few minutes earlier. In this spiritual reality, an accident had never occurred, because there was no opportunity for any inharmony in God’s omnipresence.

After praying along these lines, I felt calm enough to resume cutting the rest of the okra and take it inside to wash it off before freezing it. It was only while washing the okra that I allowed myself to glance at my finger. What I saw was a normal fingertip. There was a faint black line across my finger about a quarter inch from the end, but by the next day that had completely faded away.

In thinking back on this healing I’m reminded of another statement from Science and Health: “Become conscious for a single moment that Life and intelligence are purely spiritual,—neither in nor of matter,—and the body will then utter no complaints” (Science and Health, p. 14). The marginal heading for that paragraph is “Spiritualized consciousness.” I think that for at least “a single moment” that day in the garden, I understood my true being to be spiritual, not material, and that this brought about the healing effect.

Joel Orr | Ninety Six, South Carolina, US