Who’s flying the plane?

When I take a flight, I never give a moment’s thought to who is going to fly the plane or whether they’ll do a good job. I have faith that pilots know how to fly planes, and that I don’t need to be concerned.

But what if, while I’m standing in line for my flight, someone from the airline were to tap me on the shoulder and say that the pilot had not shown up and that I had been chosen to fly the plane? For starters, I know nothing about flying planes, so that would sound like very bad news for the passengers.

Obviously, it’s never going to happen. But thinking about this scenario made me realize how similarly flawed our thinking is when we have a problem and think that we need to really get our act together and make something happen. Just as I know nothing about flying, I know nothing about what it’s like to be God, who governs every detail of our being.

God is infinite Spirit and divine Mind. He knows Himself and His entirely spiritual creation perfectly. He knows every one of His own ideas and is wholly responsible for their being perfect and eternal. So my experience of healing through prayer depends primarily on my understanding of the power of God – understanding and feeling that God is omnipresent, omnipotent, and omniscient.

In times of physical need, large or small, we can follow Christ’s way of healing. We can turn from what the material senses are reporting regarding a situation and accept what Jesus repeatedly taught – that the kingdom of God, the government of Spirit, is within each one of us, within our present capacity to understand and experience. Countless individuals have experienced that as we do this, the body responds by resuming its normal functions.

A couple of years ago, I was walking down the street from the subway one evening when without warning my nose started to bleed profusely. I began to walk faster while holding a tissue to my nose, which quickly proved inadequate to stem the flow. I saw no option but to go into a nearby restaurant and ask for a paper towel. The man I spoke to looked around and said they didn’t have any, but he told me to wait and kindly went to the store next door and purchased a roll. I was profoundly grateful to him. I then asked him if I could sit in private for a little while.

He led me upstairs to a gloomy and dark storage space – for which I couldn’t have felt more grateful. It actually seemed like a sanctuary to me. The bleeding did not lessen, but in that quiet place I felt absolutely calm – completely convinced that God, Love, was in control of me. I didn’t have to get control; I simply had to admit that because our true identity is spiritual and maintained by God, I was controlled right then by infinite intelligence, the divine Mind, our God who is Love.

Calmly, although my nose was still bleeding, I went downstairs and thanked the man who had helped me. I said I felt I could walk the few blocks to get home.

At home I cleaned myself up, and the bleeding stopped. I went to bed without any apprehension and slept in the sacred confidence of knowing that God, divine Life and Love, was conscious of me and taking care of me, moment by moment. My whole responsibility was to admit, without reservation, that God, Life itself, is lovingly conscious of and caring for each one of us all the time. And thus it proved; there was no further bleeding.

The experience left me more convinced than ever of the truth of this statement from “Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures” by Mary Baker Eddy, the discoverer of Christian Science: “The prayer that reforms the sinner and heals the sick is an absolute faith that all things are possible to God, – a spiritual understanding of Him, an unselfed love” (p. 1).

There is simply no place in God, Spirit, for the existence of anything that would limit our health and well-being. Spirit is governing every detail of our true, spiritual being at every moment. Nothing could be safer.

Adapted from an article published in the June 22, 2020, issue of the Christian Science Sentinel.