“With God we always have what we need”
/Did the book make changes in your view of Christian Science healing? How would you sum up these changes of view or attitude?
After reading the book it has changed the way I approach my healing work. In reading it, I found I was being directly challenged with thoughts such as, “Why am I not experiencing healings like these?” “What did these individuals do that I am not doing?” (SH p. 571:16-18) “Did they have something more or different than I have, or know something more?” I should add that this book has been a favorite of mine since high school days, and that I have read it multiple times as I have always found the testimonies inspiring. This time, however, the “distance” between these experiences and my own seemed to be even greater, and I found myself praying for answers to the questions posed above.
The answer, when it came, was amazingly simple – you are not applying what you know. I began to realize that in almost all situations I was working from the standpoint that I did not know enough to consistently experience healing, and therefore I was always working to acquire more knowledge, and never made the effort to apply what I did know. It was just the opposite for so many in this book – they were put in situations where there was little time to ponder any questions of knowledge – they just went and declared what they knew, trusting God it would be sufficient…and it was. So my specific learning from this assignment to date has been:
1) With God we always have what we need – so trust him, trust our eternal relationship with him to meet every need whenever and wherever it occurs – Truth is always the victor when we get ourselves out of the way.
2) Apply and trust what I know – do not shy away from handling any claim…listen, and God will provide “the wisdom and the occasion for a victory over evil.” It is God who does the work, and he will ALWAYS reveal all that we need.
3) Ask God for help – I have always shied away from asking for help, even humanly asking others to help me with day-to-day issues. Metaphysically, I’ve always started and stayed with affirming what I understood to be the truth of each situation.
Not that this is wrong, but I’m beginning to believe too often this relies on a human understanding of the Truth vs. the “living truth” that is being revealed to us by God moment by moment, situation by situation. Perhaps said another way, I’ve been relying on myself to bring the truth forward rather than asking God to reveal what I specifically needed to know in any given situation. None of these three have been lightweight findings – yet the number and severity of issues I’ve had to face since starting this assignment has substantially increased. But just being willing to apply what “little” I do know, even in “fear and trembling”, the results have been remarkable.
My favorite accounts of healing:
Chapter 2 - Tide of Healing, pp. 136-145, the experiences of a young Austrian woman who discovered Christian Science while being held in a German Stalag during WWII.
This individual, after discovering Christian Science and reading for approximately three months, glimpsed enough of who man truly is and had developed such a sense of spiritual man’s freedom, that she picked up her things and just walked out unmolested through the only entrance to the camp, passed armed guards, with no identification papers or food ration cards. For the remainder of the war she found both protection and sustenance based on her growing understanding of the real man, many times receiving help from the very authorities who normally would have arrested her. As she stated, her sole purpose in life became to understand God more, and her spiritual innocence protected and provided for her whatever she needed. It wasn’t some laborious, complicated demonstration, but the confident, active application of what she knew. This testimony did much to open my eyes regarding what I needed to do, and I am finding I am able to do. Remarkable!
Chapter 2 - Tide of Healing, pp. 229-231, the experiences of a young naval aviator who experienced an engine failure while flying a 1950’s version of a jet fighter. It has always been easier for me to see Science as applying to issues of health, relationships, finances, etc., than to see it applying to hard technology, which seems to exist under its own laws and rules. In this case, an in-flight failure of an early vintage jet engine, left this young pilot no time to dig out the books, find and study the right citations – all he had was what he knew at 28,000 feet, and like all of us, this included the ever-presence of God, right where he was regardless of the situation. What a healing – it took three attempts to re-light the engine, each time using up more and more altitude, but it finally did start and he was able to make an uneventful return to his home base. When they tore the engine down, they saw one fuel pump had completely failed which would have made restarting the engine highly unlikely, if not impossible. As a pilot (of much smaller and simpler airplanes), this healing has always had special meaning to me, affirming God’s omnipresence and omnipotence in all situations. The most challenging situation I ever faced was a total cockpit electrical failure while flying home alone one night. What stood out to me in this situation was not the challenge, but how clearly I recalled specific training for just such a situation – training which had happened at least 15+ years earlier (I think this is called “presence of Mind”) – and how simply and easily (and safely) the flight was concluded.