“Strong faith, understanding, and trust in God were the qualities of thought that opened the way for the healings”

Thank you for the wonderful assignment. At first, I did not know how I could read all of the testimonies from the bound volumes because it is a 70-minute drive to our Society’s Reading Room and we have only one car, which my husband takes to work. Then I realized that since our Reading Room is located in our church building, I could do the reading by arriving early on Sundays, and my husband graciously agreed to leave for church earlier than usual. After doing this for five weeks, I had read all of the testimonies. This was a demonstration in itself!

In answering your questions, yes I do feel differently about both Christian Science healing and my own practice because of the reading. 

The testifiers and practitioners all appear to have started from the high mental standpoint of the facts of God’s omnipotence and the truth of spiritual being, rather than being awed by the severity and complexity of the physical symptoms. I gained a clear sense that this strong faith, understanding, and trust in God were the qualities of thought that opened the way for the healings.

A little while after completing the assignment, I found this verse in Psalms: “Open Thou mine eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of Thy law” (Ps. 119:18). It summed everything up for me.

This strong idea brought about this healing. Our small Society had two members pass away shortly before Thanksgiving 2011. Our membership dwindled to a very small number and the frequent guests we had always welcomed to our services largely disappeared.

“Why is this happening?” I kept asking myself. “Is it because our remaining members are all so sad, or is it because the members who passed were both so prominent in the community that the public thinks we are hurting?” The assignment readings opened my eyes, just as the Psalm says, and I became alert to the mesmerism that was prompting these useless questions. I gained a stronger sense of the spiritual realities exemplified in God’s divine idea of church.

A day or two after this, a member of our church phoned saying he needed healing of dizziness and nausea. I had been working with Hymn 392 (which speaks of Christ’s new appearing) prior to the call and continued to work with the ideas from that hymn. Within a short time, the member phoned back to say he was healed and ready to eat lunch.

Matthew 21:13 and 14 from the Easter-week Bible Lesson then took on a fresh meaning. Jesus has just cast out the moneychangers from the temple, saying, “My house shall be called the house of prayer; but ye have made it a den of thieves.” Then “the blind and the lame came to him in the temple; and he healed them.” In other words, God’s church is freed from the suggestions of thieving mortal mind by the Christ-power, allowing healing to take place unhindered.