Walking with freedom

A few years ago, I injured my knee playing softball with friends. I expected the injury to heal, but over a period of months the symptoms got worse. Eventually it reached a point where it took some moments for me to straighten my leg or to be able to stand up after sitting.

Based on the comments of two co-workers who were receiving medical treatment for a similar difficulty, I learned that these symptoms were sometimes considered irreversible.

I knew, however, from past experience that the injury could be permanently healed by the prayerful application of God’s laws, which harmoniously govern His entire creation. The power of these laws has been proven to me throughout my life through studying and putting into practice the Science of Christianity, which Jesus taught and which Mary Baker Eddy discovered and explained in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures. Over the years, I’ve experienced healings of broken bones, vision problems, and many other challenges.

So I began to pray about this condition. I denied that disease or injury could affect my being, since I was made in the image of God as Genesis 1:26 assures us. I affirmed that because God was my Creator and sustained my life, I reflected His substance and perfection. Divine law governed my life, and no physical condition could supplant this power.

At first, the symptoms persisted unabated. Then, while on vacation, I fell and seriously wrenched the same knee. That was the turning point that caused me to devote even more diligent attention to seeking a spiritual solution.

I realized I needed a better understanding of what God’s image includes, and began to search for attributes of God that I expressed by virtue of being His likeness. My daily walk with our golden retriever, Dave, gave me a wonderful opportunity to pursue this prayerful focus. On these walks, Dave constantly wanted to walk faster than I could. But this brought me to an observation. He was expressing a lot of qualities that I was not, and I began to look at him as a model of mobility. He showed me that God’s creation must include unfettered movement, extension, flexibility, stability, grace, quickness, speed, strength. There were also the attributes of joy, freedom, and vitality that I knew I could express spontaneously as God’s image. Those attributes were part of my being because God, or Spirit, was their source.

Each day I prayed to see more clearly that those qualities were mine through reflecting my Creator, even in the face of the physical evidence to the contrary. I expressed gratitude that in spite of my current condition, the truth was that God’s all-good creation included neither inflammation, pain, friction, nor disease.

The ideas in this passage from Science and Health became the cornerstone of my spiritual search: “The Christian Scientist, understanding scientifically that all is Mind, commences with mental causation, the truth of being, to destroy the error. This corrective is an alterative, reaching to every part of the human system. According to Scripture, it searches ‘the joints and marrow,’ and it restores the harmony of man” (Science and Health, p. 423).

As I continued with the work of discovering more of my true spiritual nature and makeup, and understanding that Mind was the only cause, over the next several weeks I found my knee regaining its normal flexibility, and the pain diminishing. This progress continued until all of the symptoms disappeared.

I’m so grateful for this healing. Today I walk, run, bend my knees, work, and play in complete freedom. But even more, I appreciate my growing understanding of the spiritual fact that our well-being is never subject to age, accident, or disease, but is maintained by the God who loves us.

Greg McLane | Dallas, Texas, US