"Precept must be upon precept, precept upon precept, line upon line, line upon line, here a little and there a little." Isaiah 28:10
"Precept must be upon precept, precept upon precept, line upon line, line upon line, here a little and there a little." Isaiah 28:10
I love the healing atmosphere of services and meetings in branch Churches of Christ, Scientist. It gives me some time to spend quietly with God during the week, away from the bustle and distractions of everyday life.
Recently, I was sitting in a Wednesday testimony meeting and noticed quite a bit of coughing in the congregation. I began to pray that nobody would be distracted by these issues and to affirm that everyone is able to express and receive all the good inspiration God is providing at each moment.
Then the thought came: “What good are my prayers going to do for someone who doesn’t even know that I’m praying? How can what I’m thinking about help another person?” The answer came immediately. Right at the start of the Bible, we read that God created all of us like Him: “God created man in his own image . . .” (Genesis 1:27). This means that because God is Spirit, we are actually spiritual and limitless, not material beings disconnected from one another with personal minds confined to brains.
Also, if we’re made in God’s image, then we’re completely free from illness just like God – infinite, all-powerful good – is. Symptoms of illness of any kind don’t belong to anyone’s real identity. This is because nobody’s true nature is material and sickly to begin with. We were created as entirely spiritual, by the God who is divine Spirit. Just like the law of gravity doesn’t apply to some things and not others, God’s law of health applies to all, irrespective of different personalities.
Mary Baker Eddy once wrote to one of her students, referring to someone with symptoms that included coughing, “When you hear her hawking, etc., remember you do not hear her, that hers is a dream, and yours a dream,
also . . . when hearing your own dream that she is coughing, you must realise as much as in you lieth now, that you do not hear her and say it so much and say it so to yourself and to her until you break both your dreams.” (Mary Baker Eddy: Christian Healer – Amplified Edition, page 222).
I realised that the most effective thing I could do in this situation was to mentally declare this spiritual truth about the unreality of illness. This helped me focus on the service itself – on the healing ideas being read from the Pastor, (the Bible and Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy) and shared in the attendees’ testimonies of healing.
In my own small way, I was contributing to a shift in thought away from darkness and toward light. The power of Spirit far outweighs material beliefs about sickness.
I loved this revelation, and, later, when I told a friend about it, she asked a natural question: “Did people stop coughing?” I had no recollection of people coughing for the rest of the meeting. My thought wasn’t focused on the illness anymore, just on all the good that was being shared. And I’m certain that the others present felt the touch of God’s healing love, too.
Science and Health explains: “Human sense may well marvel at discord, while, to a diviner sense, harmony is the real and discord the unreal. We may well be astonished at sin, sickness, and death. We may well be perplexed at human fear; and still more astounded at hatred, which lifts its hydra head, showing its horns in the many inventions of evil. But why should we stand aghast at nothingness?” (Page 563). When we think we are personally responsible for fixing all of others’ problems, it can feel like we are faced with a Goliath-sized obstacle. However, when we understand that the first step is to correct our own thinking about a situation – and that, like David, we have God’s power on our side to do so – the obstacle doesn’t seem so large.
We all have the ability to wake up from distracting dreams, or misperceptions of the true nature of man as God’s spiritual and pure creation and realise the unreality and impersonality of illness. This kind of mental alertness helps bring healing to situations of all kinds, tipping human experience away from discord and toward divine Truth, God.
(This testimony has been accepted for publication in the Christian Science periodicals).