“Man’s extremity is God’s opportunity”

Rainbow

by Michael Morgan

After three days of trekking through the Himalayas, I developed a sharp pain in my knee. After nine hours of walking in the pouring rain, carefully dodging, and many times slipping on, steep wet rocks, we finally began to descend into the small village where we would be staying. Due to space efficiency I had left my Science and Health back at the hotel in Kathmandu and only had my Bible Lesson. On returning to the hotel I struggled, trying to steer my thoughts away from the pain and onto the beautiful surroundings: Soul manifested.

I returned to my room and opened up my Full Text Bible Lesson to the first Lesson of that month: Everlasting Punishment.

As I reread the two week old Lesson, I questioned what kind of spiritual help the subject could provide when I was certain I had not committed any sin while trekking that could have lead to my injury. I contemplated skipping to the next week, but something kept me reading.

I came upon the part in the story of Jacob and Esau when Jacob is wrestling with the angel, “And when he saw that he prevailed not against him, he touched the hollow of his thigh; and the hollow of Jacob’s thigh was out of joint….”

Immediately I thought about the suggestion that my own knee was out of joint.” Mary Baker Eddy’s interpretation of the passage proved extremely helpful in lifting my thought about the seeming material cause of the injury, “Jacob was alone, wrestling with error,—struggling with a mortal sense of life, substance, and intelligence as existent in matter with its false pleasures and pains, —when an angel, a mesage from Truth and Love, appeared to him and smote the sinew, or strength, of his error, till he saw its unreality.”

These words snapped my thought into the realization that this was an opportunity to demonstrate the healing and understanding of reality that I came to this region for in the first place.

I finished the Lesson and sprang up in my bed to look out my window. What was waiting outside I will never forget: the most beautiful rainbow I have ever seen in my entire life some several hundred feet away perfectly placed in front of me.

I grabbed my camera, hopped out of my window and onto the balcony, and began taking pictures, completely forgetting my supposed handicap.

I was so absorbed in the beauty of this rainbow that I completely forgot about the pain in my knee. The rainbow was a wonderful symbol of the perfection and beauty that I myself represent.

Within minutes the rainbow had disappeared, but my healing did not. It was almost as if that rainbow was like the break of day, a visual manifestation of my understanding about myself. The healing that I was so open to after realizing that it was just of an example of how “Man’s extremity is God’s opportunity” took place instantaneously. The next day of trekking for four hours went by smoothly and painlessly in beautiful weather. I did not need a name change or a wrestling match with an angel to see the light of Truth and Love—but the rainbow was a real nice addition.

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