" … even when I wasn’t ready to fully embrace it …"
/I am very grateful for all that modern technology has done to enable access to all we need for our study of Christian Science – wherever we are. But as I continue to read the book, it has struck me that none of these tools were available for all the people who were healed at the time, and yet awe-inspiring healings happened. Some had the Bible, some may have had Science and Health, others just a Christian Science Journal, in other instances, a Christian Scientist may have prayed or shared a few words of encouragement. Healings happened – when the healing Christ message was allowed in, sometimes reluctantly, often as a desperate “last” measure.
To sum it up: What I most need is to enter into that closet and shut the door, be still, and silence the material senses (distractions, doubts, and fear.) “In the quiet sanctuary of earnest longings, … deny sin and plead God’s allness.” Healing happens!
What has stayed with me from many of the testimonies in the book is the change in thought, accepting of Christ-healing, and child-like confident trust in God, that led to awe-inspiring physical healings.
Here are few quotes from testimonies that have touched me deeply:
Healing of a 10-months old child with bronchial pneumonia and spinal meningitis. Medical treatment was to no avail. Christian Science treatment was sought, and the child was healed. Mother writes: “It is needless to say that we are more than grateful for all this good that is ours just for the accepting.” pp. 62-63
Man suffering from heart trouble and consumption of both lungs, writes: “Up till that moment the many kind doctors who’d attended me had gone to my body and done what they could for that, but had paid no attention to my thought, which directly controlled my body. Now the Christian Scientist did exactly the reverse: she took no notice of my body but went straight to my thought and set that right with the truth of being as taught in Christian Science – …”
Testimony of a Christian Science Sunday School student, 14 years of age. When their canoe with six children capsized, they hung on, the 10 year old suggesting they “know the truth.” Some repeated the “Scientific Statement of Being,” and the little ones said the prayer by Mary Baker Eddy for little children. The oldest swam (as he later learned, a distance of 4 miles) to get help. All were eventually rescued. After they were settled home, the little 4 year old was asked what she had thought all the long while she was waiting for the older boy to return. She said, “Well, I knew that the water was over father’s head, and I knew that it wasn’t over God’s head.” pp.110-111
A man from Japan suffered from great depression and mental struggle during the war years. He wrote that Christian Science pulled him through, because it is so logical … He continued that the biggest problem of his life was a false sense of nationalism. The first step in his healing came when he heard of a testimony which a Japanese friend had given in America shortly after the outbreak of war. In it she said: “I do not have to think American thoughts. I do not have to think Japanese thoughts. I have only to think God’s thoughts.” He began to see himself as God’s idea, in the light of divine Principle and not of nationality. pp. 128-129
Peter Henniker–Heaton’s testimony of being paralyzed for ten years in London during the war. His persistent reliance on Christian Science through all those years led him to a full recovery and an active life again. He says: “All the good of those years has remained with me; all the loss and evil are as though they had never been.” pp.156-157
This is a healing that happened many years ago. I haven’t thought of it for a very long time. It came to mind a few days ago, just as I was going to say I didn’t have anything worth writing in answer to question 3!
When our son was 3 years old, and it was a few years before I began to earnestly study Christian Science, he was diagnosed with tuberculosis. I was asked to make him swallow one tablet a day. It was a large one, and it was a daily struggle to get him to swallow it. A few months earlier I had been given a copy of Science and Health. I wasn’t interested in ‘religion.’ I wasn’t interested in what it had to offer. But as I got frustrated and anxious that he wasn’t taking the medication, I decided to flip through the pages of Science and Health, thinking what had I to lose? I recall reading the preface and the first chapter Prayer, and something must have clicked. I decided that chasing my son around the room to get him to swallow the pills wasn’t helping, so I just stopped trying to make him take them. He seemed fine anyway. Well, a few months later I took him to a pediatrician for a routine visit. I was told his heart and lungs were healthy. So all was well. Some years later when we were emigrating, we had to take a complete physical including X-rays, in order to be allowed into the country we were coming to (USA). By then I was a student of Christian Science and a member of The Mother Church. Looking at the test results, a doctor asked whether our son – by then a teenager, had had a serious lung infection. But whatever it was, the doctor said, it had been completely healed, and there was just a scar that had prompted the question. With gratitude I acknowledged that what had occurred 14 years earlier, had been a healing in Christian Science, even when I wasn’t ready to fully embrace it at the time.