Teach Us to Pray: Cheerfulness Heals

The joy of health and happiness in Christ fills my body
with new life, and I am made whole.
The love of the cheerful giver is expressed in me, and I
feel Spirit pouring out its plenty into all my affairs.

EVERYBODY advocates cheerfulness as an aid to healing, but how few practice it as a vital part of the restorative principle? The large majority of sick persons are pessimists. They think they are much worse off than they are. They retard the healing efforts of nature and nature's God by repeated shocks of mental depression and fear of the serious character of some physical shadow as transient as "ships that pass in the night."

Some of our best doctors say that eighty per cent of humanity's ills would heal of themselves if left alone. In a book called "Let's Operate," by Dr. Roy H. McKay and Norman Beasley, we find this in italics:

"What people don't know, or won't believe, is that in eighty per cent of the cases they would get better without the ministrations of a physician, if they would merely go to bed and follow a proper diet."

"This applies to operations too. Every day a distressing number of unnecessary ones are being performed."

The authors of this book are not metaphysicians. Doctor McKay is an eminent surgeon. He says in his preface, "This book was written with great reluctance."

So we find that good doctors, who have the welfare of humanity at heart, are advising that we do not race to the operating table at the first sign of pain.

"Be of good cheer." The intelligence that created your body knows how to repair it. Get still, relax, turn your attention to the sustaining life forces within your organism. Say to yourself,

Don't eat unless you are hungry. Many of our ills are caused by a greedy appetite that, in being satiated, clogs the body with surplus fuel. Jesus told His disciples that a certain type of devil (error) could be eradicated only by fasting and prayer. Then rejoice and be glad when you begin to feel the healing peace of Spirit creeping over you.

also find it paving the way for prosperity. Paul wrote, "God loveth a cheerful giver." If the Lord loves a cheerful giver, it must follow that He takes a more intimate interest in the finances of a happy person than in those of one who handles his money in a stingy fashion.

Make it a practice to put love and good cheer into all your finances, and you will open up sources of income that have stagnated because you have not given their mind substance an opportunity to flow into your affairs.

You have doubtless met commercial Jonahs--sunk in the waters of their own negative statements. Avoid their pessimistic thoughts and words. Bless what you receive; bless what you send out. God's plenteous substance moves in and through our mind constantly like a light shining in the darkness, but we do not comprehend it.

Cultivate the bountiful, cheerful spirit in every thought and act. Then your finances will flow harmoniously, and you will never lack any good thing.