I have a “happy song” – a song that reliably brings me joy. Perhaps you do too. I might be doing chores, driving on an errand, or making dinner, and I will become aware that I am singing it.

My happy song has changed over time, but right now it is a hymn in the “Christian Science Hymnal: Hymns 430-603” that begins, “Be Thou my vision, O Lord of my heart” (No. 442). As I take in its message, I feel content and close to God, Love. It moves my thought from the mundane of mortal life to a spiritual awareness that heaven is here, now. I become more conscious of my – and everyone’s – true being as God’s child, spiritual and immortal.

This week’sChristian Science Bible lesson is on the subject “Mortals and Immortals.” It begins with the instruction, “O sing unto the Lord a new song” (Psalms 96:1). A few verses on, it talks of putting on “the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator” (Colossians 3:10, New International Version). A new understanding of ourselves as made in the image of God, Spirit, our creator, is certainly worth a song!

Can we leave a mortal sense of life in matter? The Apostle Paul tells us in First Corinthians, “This mortal must put on immortality,” because as he has already explained, “As in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive” (15:53, 22).Mary Baker Eddy, the discoverer ofChristian Science, puts it this way in “Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures”: “The real man is spiritual and immortal, but the mortal and imperfect so-called ‘children of men’ are counterfeits from the beginning, to be laid aside for the pure reality” (p. 409).

We might think of laying aside a mortal sense of ourselves for the pure reality of our immortal identity as God’s children, as singing a new song. Imagine walking down a street singing a song about life’s problems. But then you hear another song, whose melody is from the always-reliable and ever-present divine Love, God. A song that’s sweet, pure, joyful, loving, and peaceful. Imagine that you begin to sing this new song.

Can you sing the first song at the same time? You can’t. The new song has become your song!

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This week’s lesson explains, “Willingness to become as a little child and to leave the old for the new, renders thought receptive of the advanced idea. Gladness to leave the false landmarks and joy to see them disappear, – this disposition helps to precipitate the ultimate harmony” (Science and Health, pp. 323-324).

This willingness to take up the new, spiritual, immortal view of ourselves and others not only brings joy, it also heals.

One evening, the night before I was to get up in the predawn for a full day of travel, I felt quite ill. To my material sense of things, the situation was not good. I knew I needed a “new song,” one bringing out my true,spiritual identity as the reflection of God, Life.

A few days before, I had been given such a song in an inspired view of a glassy, still pond. On the surface I could see a line stretched across the water with birds sitting on it, then taking off and landing again. It was beautiful. Then I moved slightly, and I realized that the wire actually ran from the ground to a high pole, and what I was seeing on the water was a perfect reflection. No bird could “land” on the reflection that wasn’t in the original.

Thinking back on this, I realized that illness can’t be part of the real, spiritual, immortal man – God’s reflection – since it is not part of God, our entirely good creator. I “sang” this song of understanding into the night, holding to the spiritual reality, refusing to change my tune. I fell asleep peacefully, then awoke in the morning completely healed and refreshed and had a glorious day of travel.

What a joy to follow Paul’s words, “I will sing with the spirit, and I will sing with the understanding also” (I Corinthians 14:15). As we do, we experience that “Science reveals the glorious possibilities of immortal man, forever unlimited by the mortal senses” (Science and Health, p. 288).

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