Lean on God and look for the blessings

I have a new daily reminder: Lean and look.

Where did this come from? I had opened the Christian Science textbook, “Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures” by Mary Baker Eddy, to the first page and read these words: “To those leaning on the sustaining infinite, to-day is big with blessings” (p. vii). What popped out to me was that word “leaning.”

I began to consider the reliability of leaning – depending completely – on God with full confidence. The rest of that quote assures us that “to-day is big with blessings.” But how do we look for those blessings?

Soon after I’d had these initial thoughts, I ran into a woman at the gym who had been taking photography courses. She explained that the courses had opened her eyes so that she was seeing things in a new way. She described the period just after the sunrise that morning – the golden hour.

She had noted all the rich colors and how the light brought out the beauty of the leaves and other landscape elements. I thought to myself, “Gee, I ‘saw’ the same morning she did, but I sure missed seeing what she saw.” She’d known how to really look – how to see what was there – in a way that I did not.

So, I reasoned, we can expect to see the fulfillment of the big-with-blessings promise in that first line of Science and Health if we know how to look. The infinite, amazing goodness and blessings of our Father-Mother God are already here and there and everywhere. And with spiritually educated eyes – those that are able to see the spiritual reality beyond the material construct – we all can perceive those blessings.

Christian Science refers to this ability to see spiritually as spiritual sense, which is explained in Science and Health as “a conscious, constant capacity to understand God” (p. 209).

We all have spiritual sense. Once when I was a child, I was ill with flu-like symptoms. My parents called a Christian Science practitioner to pray for me.

The practitioner shared with my parents a passage that is part of Mrs. Eddy’s response to the question “Has man fallen from a state of perfection?” and they read it to me. At the time, I sure felt that I had fallen out of perfect health. But as I listened deeply, I saw something beyond the sense of having fallen ill.

The passage says, “Immortal man is the eternal idea of Truth, that cannot lapse into a mortal belief or error concerning himself and his origin: he cannot get out of the focal distance of infinity. If God is upright and eternal, man as His likeness is erect in goodness and perpetual in Life, Truth, and Love. If the great cause is perfect, its effect is perfect also; and cause and effect in Science are immutable and immortal. ... The spiritual man is that perfect and unfallen likeness, coexistent and coeternal with God” (“Miscellaneous Writings 1883-1896,” pp. 78-79).

The understanding of God’s perfection, and consequently the perfection of each of God’s children made in His spiritual likeness, including me, seemed so normal and natural. I remember these concepts making such sense to me. Immediately, I was completely well. No recovery time.

I was leaning, looking, and actually seeing both God and myself through new eyes. I was realizing God’s blessing right there – discerning something of the goodness of God and seeing myself and all of creation reflecting that goodness as an undeniable present fact. The physical picture and feelings of illness were a missing-the-real-deal view of things that was corrected by Christ, the true idea of God. My perfection as a spiritual idea had been there all along, just as the beauty of that golden hour is always there for all to see.

This healing was so meaningful to me that I recall it vividly. And healing in Christian Science is not a one-off “miracle” sort of thing. I have experienced such healing throughout my life. The deeper, spiritual look is profoundly impactful.

God’s infinitely beautiful and perfect-fit blessings are always at hand. Knowing that we can lean in full trust and expect to see God’s goodness opens the day to very big blessings!

Lean and look. See the blessings.

Adapted from an article published in the Sept. 23, 2024, issue of the Christian Science Sentinel.