Casting out the beam in my own eye

The following healing came day before yesterday. The Executive Committee’s email requesting fruitage arrived yesterday, so it is with genuine gratitude that I submit this account.

Last week was yet another week in which I was bothered by something painful in my left eye. For a number of days, I had been dismissive about what was going on. I considered how prayer can correctly take the form of dismissing a lie and quickly replacing it with the spiritual fact, but that prayer must have more weight than the lie. As Mrs. Eddy wrote, “The human mind acts more powerfully to offset the discords of matter and the ills of the flesh, in proportion as it puts less weight into the material or fleshly scale and more weight into the spiritual scale” (Science and Health 155:21–25). So I had to go deeper.

Skip taught us that we don’t dig around for causes of discomfort, such as grit in an eye. But I did know that Jesus’ lesson about the mote and the beam (Matthew 7:3–5) was pointedly germane. For months I had been praying diligently about our tiny branch church. Recently, my concerns had centered on a remarkable loss of quality in our services. An unconstrained new member was aggressively willing to fill the role of first reader as well as being our soloist.

Sunday after Sunday, my fears grew. I feared that visitors or members who occasionally attend would be unable to hear the substance of the Bible Lesson and wouldn’t understand that Christian Science is uplifting and healing. And because of this, those people would never return.

Mrs. Eddy’s vast counsel on lies, false sense, and personality was right at hand. Of course, it all came back to me: My own thought (my eye) must be open and purified. The fruits of the spirit—grace, peace and vision—are always mine and everyone’s because God, Mind, is All. No one coming to our branch services can be blocked from the fact of their relationship to our all-loving God! There is no mist, no veil, no covering of any human making that can have a disruptive effect.

I recalled an article by Skip’s teacher, Milton Simon, entitled “Undisturbed” (Sentinel, March 26, 1955). That word undisturbed clinched it for me, and my eye was healed.