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persons, is the glass through which religious persons perceive the
goodness of God. The occasions of thankfulness to others for what
they have done for us are at the same time the occasions for thankfulness to God.... For all the anxieties and struggles of living, we are
grateful to be, to exist. In certain moments of experience we recognize
that we have been loved by others beyond our deserving, we have been
forgiven when we dared not believe it was possible, we have been sustained by the patience of others when they have had sufficient reasons
to reject us, we have benefited from nature and society more than we have contributed to them. We have received more than we have earned
or deserved, and we are thankful. In the religious consciousness these
are experiences that open the possibility of affirming the goodness of
God; they confirm his goodness which we only dimly and in part apprehend. (Gustafson 1975,101-2)

    Gustafson goes on to explain that our senses of dependence, gratitude, obligation, remorse, possibility, and direction all originate from our experience of God in creation. Our enjoyment of God, in other words, comes
from our sense of the creation as a place of delight. Our ability to be loving
and thankful people and to know God as the source of love and the one to
whom we owe gratitude rests on our experience of having been loved "beyond our deserving."
    The priority of the goodness of the creation and its Creator leads
theologian Herb Richardson to emphasize our experience of rightness and
well-being (Richardson 1967, 57-59). Our thinking begins from a foundation in the rightness of creation. This is particularly clear in the practice of
nursing. When nurses care for the ill, they do so with a vision of what normal human functioning, what good health, looks like. This is because we
have a basic sense of rightness about the world. We observe the structure
of the world and affirm that all of its various parts work together in ways
that are discernibly good. We also, according to Richardson, have a sense of
well-being, an awareness that these structures of the world make for human flourishing, that reality is not fundamentally hostile to the human
good. We were made for this world, not for some spiritual, heavenly realm
to which we can escape after death. We find in this world the proper context for human life and human work.
    We see that view of healing in Jesus' ministry. He didn't radically
transform those he healed into something other than what they were made
and intended to be. Christ's miracles of healing were numerous: the man
with leprosy, the centurion's paralyzed and suffering servant, Peter's
mother-in-law afflicted with a fever, those possessed by demons, the
woman with a bleeding disorder, Jairus's dead daughter, the blind, and on
the list goes. The Gospel writer Matthew simply tells us, "Many crowds followed him, and he cured all of them" (Matthew 12:15). In each instance, it
is apparent that Jesus was restoring normal function and good health. Extremities could now bear weight; arms could once again extend and perform a full range of motion; skin was intact; platelets facilitated proper clotting; eyes could see; minds could comprehend the world around them
- in each instance Jesus restored what was intended to be in the goodness
of creation. Jesus' healing ministry affirms that this world is the right and
proper context for human life. We have, then, a sense of rightness and wellbeing about the world, a sense that we fit here. Nurses assume this rightness as they seek to promote, enhance, and restore their clients' sense of
well-being. Nurses attempt, in other words, to conform the is, the current
situation, to the ought. For the Christian nurse, the theological framework
of a creative, loving God provides the background for the recognition and
pursuit of health.

    In his famous work The Nature of True Virtue, written in the early
eighteenth century, Jonathan