“All these testimonies are like the line from hymn 236: 'Let Truth be proclaimed, let God’s love be retold,'”

Here’s my first response to the Association Assignment:

I was struck by the number of instantaneous healings.  These healings involved such things as mothers’ alert responses to accidents involving their children; healings that came almost unnoticed as the result of reading Science and Health, by Mary Baker Eddy; healings that happened right at the practitioner’s office or at a church service; and healings that erased chronic years-long conditions.

These folks were seeing the revelation and then walking in it.  I noticed how many times people didn’t lie down when struck by disease or injury, but went right back to work or continued walking … acting immediately on the truth of their prayers.  This immediacy has been a valuable example to me.  Or here’s an account of someone getting up from lying down:

“After a particularly trying night and morning, the thought came clearly to me, ‘If all these statements which you have been making are true, why do you not get up and go about your business?’ I heeded the angel message, and arose at once and dressed myself. Within a few hours my strength returned, the disease vanished, and I began to learn actively to claim the truth I voiced. This healing took place over twenty years ago and has been permanent.   Fenn CSJ June 43

The healings of disease are so numerous and decisive and quick that it’s extremely helpful in silencing mortal mind’s constant aggressive viewpoint (pushing, publishing, believing) that there is solidity to matter, or that mortal mind can resist Spirit. 

Also many of the testifiers speak of going to their first church service and feeling the spirit of it.  One testifier said: “the harmonious atmosphere and radiant faces made a lasting impression on me.”  (Nov 13, ‘43 CSS)  Another mentioned being struck by a “religion that would make people so radiantly happy”  (Dec 18, ’43 CSS)  Another told of “my first visit to a Christian Science Sunday service and the conscious feeling of a deep love surrounding me, as I had never felt it before,…” (Mar ’43 CSJ)  And one said, “…my first Sunday service in Christian Science, was to me so spiritual, sacred, and peaceful that my thoughts were lifted above human selfhood;…”  (Mar ’43 CSJ)   It reminds me to be conscious of what I’m bringing to church services!

I have been wanting very much to have a wider, more universal, sense of the practice.  So it has been very interesting (awakening) to see all of the natural spontaneous offering of prayer, Science and Health, lectures, services, to neighbors or to strangers or to fellow employees or to relatives …  It’s wanting so much to help, comfort, relieve our fellow man – and knowing from experience that Christian Science does give this help. 

It’s also wonderful to hear all of the love of Christian Science in these testimonies – from soldiers needing love or needing to stay alert and safe, from those who had been healed, and from so many for its making sense of very dark times.  Christian Science healing the heart fills these accounts. 

Is this kind of healing found today?  Yes.  I think of the healings in the archives of the Association website.  Or some that I hear at Wednesday Evening Meetings or read in the periodicals.  Also I know that some of the healings I’ve experienced have seemed important to me.  I think of decisive healings of what I feared to be appendicitis when I was far from home, of an attack involving paralysis, of extensive disability from rheumatism, of heart irregularities, of severe flu…  Other immediate family members have had healings of broken bones (set and healed quickly through prayer), of pneumonia, of a disabling back condition diagnosed (before CS) as irreversible from a mild childhood case of polio, of a throat condition that followed exposure to toxins, and more. 

Still, I really want to see more consistently that “profoundly impressive” healing is normal.  That it can be expected.  I know it’s what Mrs. Eddy knew was possible and that it’s what she expected, but I find that I have to work at it.  I stumbled a bit when I read that first sentence in Science and Health a while ago – at the phrase “an absolute faith that all things are possible to God…”  And I finally concluded that that phrase was a good indication to myself of whether I was alert or not.  I love that these testifiers write so often of their immediate expectation of such healing – often when things looked pretty dire.  They put their full weight on Truth. 

I am so grateful for this assignment.  All these testimonies are like the line from hymn 236:  “Let Truth be proclaimed, let God’s love be retold,”