“Take possession of your body…”

Sharing a wonderful, quick healing here, and as usual, it’s the spiritual growth that was the main thing.

I developed a very painful condition in my neck such that it was jarring to move my head or turn in bed. I had to be very careful walking, but I could at least sit quietly at my desk and work without any pain, so that was nice. This went on for a few days. I prayed about it and also called a practitioner. The healing came one morning when I was reading this statement from Science and Health from the weekly Bible lesson: ‘Take possession of your body and govern its feeling and its action.’ I really wrestled with that command. Just how does one do that? I listened for an answer. Two things came to me as I sat quietly listening.

First, I realized that it is not really myself that governs the body, but divine Mind. I went through all of the seven synonyms as governing my feeling and my action.

Then, I suddenly remembered what Mrs. Eddy says about how a tree trunk doesn’t suffer from a wound or gash, and neither would our bodies – were it not for mortal mind. I saw that matter is just plain old dumb. It doesn’t know anything and can’t say or do anything.

The healing was complete shortly thereafter, and now, here’s the really neat thing. On Sunday, when I shared this healing with my high school student in Sunday School, we looked up that quote about taking possession of our bodies. As I glanced down the page, I saw that the tree trunk idea was in the very next paragraph. I was in awe. I did not know that these two ideas – taking possession of our bodies and the gashed tree trunk example – went together. I study the lesson with the full text quarterly, and the lesson that week only included the first statement, not the second one about the tree trunk. And yet, God very clearly communicated to me that second idea, as well. The two are meant to go together, and even though I did not have them together in the full-text citation, divine Mind delivered them to me that way.

That’s the thing that impressed me. I did not know these two ideas went together, but Mind did, and revealed it to me. I find this so comforting and reassuring. We are ALWAYS given what we need to know.