Injury, pain…and a quick healing

I was working from home one day so I could receive a package from UPS. The weather in Boston had been really warm, and my wife and I had ordered a new air-conditioning unit. While waiting for the deliveryman, I received a very important telephone call. The conversation was going great, and about an hour into the call the deliveryman buzzed my apartment. I excused myself, put the phone down, and quickly ran downstairs to meet him.

“Hi, I’m Jake! How are you doing today?” I asked as I opened the door.

“I could be better; my arm is killing me.” He replied, “I hope you can get this thing up the stairs. It’s a little over 100 pounds.”

I could tell that he was a kind man who clearly felt awful about not being able to help carry the unit up the stairs. I assured him that it was fine. We put the box on a dolly and rolled it from the truck to the stairs leading to the front door of the apartment building. After getting the unit to the door, the deliveryman then said that he could help me with the first set of stairs.

The box wasn’t light, and he took the heavier end of it. I saw the care and love he was expressing as the beginning of his healing, even if he might not think about getting better that way. Once we were past the front door, he gave the package one final push to get it well inside the building. My ankle ended up smashed between the package and the bottom stair leading up to my apartment. I said nothing, and he didn’t notice what had happened but went quickly on his way. The sight of the injury was not pretty, and I was in immense pain.

Almost immediately, though, a line from Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy came to thought: “This is the doctrine of Christian Science: that divine Love cannot be deprived of its manifestation, or object; that joy cannot be turned into sorrow, for sorrow is not the master of joy; that good can never produce evil…”. ¹ I felt nothing but kindness and love both from and for this man.

I had a wonderful phone call waiting upstairs. And I was so grateful that the AC unit had arrived! There was nothing but God, divine Love, around me, and I thought about how the expression of Love (me, in this case) could not be deprived of its manifestation. The injury could not limit or keep me from what was natural for me to do! I felt such a surge of joy that without a second thought I leaped up the three flights of stairs and finished my phone conversation. After the call was over, I went back downstairs to where the package was, threw it over my shoulder, and marched back up to my apartment.

A few hours later a friend came by to pick up my wife and me for his birthday dinner. When I started to put on my shoes, I realized that the discoloration, swelling, and pain had all completely disappeared!

Mrs. Eddy certainly knew what she was talking about when she wrote in The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany, “Divine Love is our only physician, and never loses a case”. ²

By Jake Lowe

Posted on Wednesday, August 1st, 2012 at 2:21 pm | Follow responses with the RSS feed
Topics: Health | Tags: bruise, Healing, swelling