When I served as First Reader for my branch church, I would often start to feel congested as the weekend approached. I would work on it, then ask for help from a practitioner so I could speak clearly on Sunday. This scenario occurred weekly and was so regular that it was impossible not to see that mortal mind was trying to obscure the voice of Truth at our services. The temptation gradually diminished and the message became more powerful.

Years later when I was reading at another branch, the congestion came again. This time I remember turning to the Bible Lesson for healing and noticing how the symptoms vanished as I got into the message of the Lesson. When the suggestion came again, I turned to the Lesson, and with consistent results, it vanished. There is great power in God’s word.

This experience reminds me of a testimony in “Fruitage” in which the author describes the healing of a sprained ankle: “The accident occurred in the morning, and all that day and during the night I gave myself a Christian Science treatment, as best I could. The next morning it seemed no better….Feeling that I had done all I could, I decided to stop thinking about it. I took my copy of Science and Health and began reading….After two hours….it was perfectly well. It was healed while I was ‘absent from the body’ and ‘present with the Lord.’ This experience was worth a great deal to me, for it showed me how the healing is done” (Science and Health, p. 603).