Healing Grief


Are you grieving over the death of a close friend or relative? This
sense of grief can be healed, through prayer.

What is it that you are missing from the person you have lost? Is it not
the wonderful qualities they expressed? Have the qualities of joy,
kindness, and unselfishness, gone now that your loved one is no longer
present with you? These qualities can never leave you because they come
from God. All good comes from God and can never be separated from us.
God loves you just as much now as he did when your dear one was still
here. Real love comes from God and not from a person. The love you felt
from the one you lost came from God. He or she was just a good
reflection of this love.

God loves us and God still loves the person who has passed on. God
brings all good. He does not bring good into our lives and then take it
away through death. Since God created us, we are His perfect expression.
God is Life therefore man must be the expression of Life.

In the book of Genesis there are two accounts of man's creation. In the
first account man was born in the image and likeness of God. In the
second account he is born of dust. In this account we are told that
since we were born of dust we must return to dust. We have a choice to
make here. Which account of our creation do we choose to accept? We can
only be one or the other. The true account is that we are His image and
likeness. In reality we were never born in a body and will never die out
of one. We are spiritual and not material.

Mary Baker Eddy states in her book Science and Health with Key to the
Scriptures, " A blundering despatch, mistakenly announcing the death of a
friend, occasions the same grief that the friend's real death would
bring. You think that your anguish is occasioned by your loss. Another
despatch, correcting the mistake, heals your grief, and you learn that
your suffering was merely the result of your belief. So, when our
friends pass from our sight and we lament, that lamentation is needless
and causeless. We shall perceive this to be true when we grow into the
understanding of Life, and know that there is no death."(386:16-22,30-2)

Working in Christian Science facilities over twenty years, I have seen
many healings through prayer. I have also witnessed some cases when a
patient has passed on. Sometimes, I used to get quite attached to the
person that had passed on. I used to grieve when many of them passed on.
It used to really bother me how rough the undertaker was when he
transferred the body unto his gurney. I believed that the corpse I was
looking at was man.

One day I realized that the corpse of that dear one that I had nursed,
was really just like a mannequin. If I built a mannequin and told myself
that was the patient, I would know it could not be. The patient
represents life. He or she had certain wonderful qualities that I loved.
A mannequin or a body has no qualities of life therefore it cannot be
man. The patient I had been nursing was not in that body. I realized
that I had no reason to be grieving because they were continuing to
express life. Life has nothing to do with a body whether it is alive or
dead. Life is spiritual and not material.

The Bible tells us, "Thou hast turned for me my mourning into dancing:
thou hast put off my sackcloth, and girded me with gladness; To the end
that my glory may sing praise to thee, and not be silent."(Ps. 30:11,12)
Today let us sing praises to God. Rejoice that God is our life and we
can never be separated from Him. Our life continues to be blessed. We
can never stop loving nor being loved it is our divine right as God's
perfect child.

A hymn from the Christian Science Hymnal says:
"Love is true solace and giveth joy for sorrow,
O, in that light, all earthly loss is gain;
Joy must endure, Love's giving is forever;
Life is of God, whose radiance cannot wane."(Hymn 172:2)