God’s forever relevance

A group of Christian teenagers was asked to answer a question quickly, without thinking about it. The question had to do with whether God knows anything related to modern life. Virtually all of them said “no,” though upon further reflection, they changed their answer to “yes.” He is, after all, God!

Do we immediately think of God, Love, as relevant in our lives? When things are going well, we may not think of God much at all, not feeling the need of His help. But it’s particularly in the good we experience that we can most directly feel His relevance. As the Bible tells us, “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning” (James 1:17). God, the only cause and creator, is good and is the source of all good.

When we look for it, we can see this good expressed everywhere. As Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, puts it, “The modest arbutus sends her sweet breath to heaven. The great rock gives shadow and shelter. The sunlight glints from the church-dome, glances into the prison-cell, glides into the sick-chamber, brightens the flower, beautifies the landscape, blesses the earth” (“Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures,” p. 516).

Everything that goes right in our lives, every good quality we can identify in ourselves or anyone else, every hint of beauty, justice, harmony, order, love, peace, sufficiency we see made manifest, has its source in God, Spirit. If we love the good, the beautiful, the true, then God is most assuredly pertinent to us, for He is their creator.

But what if things don’t look so good? Many today would argue that God is utterly irrelevant when it comes to dealing with crime, disease, corruption, selfishness, decay, disasters. Praying is fine, some might say, but we need “real” (that is, material) solutions to the problems facing us.

I once found myself praying deeply, but without much initial success, over what appeared to be a very painful ear infection. As it got worse, God and my prayer began to feel less relevant to me than finding physical relief. In the middle of the night, I found myself thinking, “I wish I could just go to sleep to escape the pain for a little while.” But then I laughed, because my next thought was, “I don’t need to go to sleep. I need to wake up to my present health and holiness!”

I understood, through my study of Christian Science, that the truth of my – and everyone’s – situation was above and outside of what the physical senses were reporting. The fact that God created all and created it spiritual and good meant that He had created neither an ear infection nor anything that could cause one.

I felt the presence of Christ, which Science and Health defines as “the divine manifestation of God, which comes to the flesh to destroy incarnate error” (p. 583). Christ, that true idea of God, was destroying the error, the dream, in my experience by revealing it as something from which I could indeed awaken. All of the pain in my ear vanished, and it never returned.

Throughout history people have been able to prove, through healing, that God’s presence and power are pertinent to every situation we face. It was through her deep study of the marvels recorded in the Bible that Mrs. Eddy discovered the Science behind this healing. The Bible records that, in finding God as the only cause, Jesus healed the blind, the deaf, the lame, and even overcame death itself. And he said that anyone who believed, or understood, his teachings would do the same (see John 14:12).

When Christ awakens us, like a mother, from the nightmare of sin and sickness, we see the utter irrelevance and impossibility of evil, and the eternal relevance, presence, power, and truth of good. This doesn’t just bless us. It enables us to help lift others out of their difficulties, too. God’s law is, in fact, universal. His relevance isn’t limited by the size of the problem.

God is “a very present help in trouble,” the psalmist tells us (Psalms 46:1). We can find ourselves in no situation where His help, His awakening truth, is not fully applicable not only to our own healing and salvation, but to that of our communities and the world!

Adapted from an editorial published in the May 2025 issue of The Christian Science Journal.