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In the book of Kings, Elisha raises the
Shunammite women's son. In the story, Elisha stretched himself upon the dead
body of the boy, mouth to mouth, hand to hand, - he was giving him a spiritual
kiss of life. It says that the boy sneezed seven times and then he opened his
eyes. It is as though Elisha was saying, Look, all the great things that are
true about God are also true about man, God's idea. So this coinciding, point
for point, with the Life which is God, demonstrates that man is the living of
Life. We do not live of ourselves. Paul says, "I die daily" (I Cor 15:31). We
are wise if we do. "I live," he says, "yet not I, but Christ liveth in me" (Gal
2:20)
It is so releasing if we can drop this
thought of my life what am I going to do today, how am I going to get through
the week, shall I have enough money for this? How it bedevils us! But if it is
not I but Life itself, individually expressed as you and me and everybody, what
a joyful, abundant sense of life we shall have! This abundant sense enabled
Jesus to feed five thousand people with five loaves and two little fishes. The
five loaves illustrated that he was feeding their thought with the bread of
Life. Just as we are doing together here — we are feeding consciousness
with the bread of Life. Life, which is God, generates life. It multiplies life,
it renews life. If you cut your finger, it heals itself. The reason for this is
that life is spontaneously self-renewed. You do not have to tell the finger to
heal itself, it stops growing when it has reached the right point. Life
produces its own form, its own healing, its own self-renewal.
There was a book published in the 1950s
by a Methodist minister's wife in South Africa called Elsie Salmon, and it was
entitled, He Heals Today. She was a woman who had the gift of healing. Her book
contains many incidents of healings of all sorts of dire things through the
laying on of hands in Christ's name, and getting the patients to recognize and
acknowledge that it was possible that the life of Christ could come into their
lives and renew them and restore them.
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