"habitually STOP...ask God... listen...and obey"
/YES, my views were changed! I was struck with the simplicity of healing, with the selfless sharing, i.e. not holding back in offering or sharing the Science of being. I realized that openly living the truth is a powerful calling; that a person’s daily example, motivates others to think about, inquire after, or recommend Christian Science to their friends and loved ones. I have been underestimating mankind’s thirst for Truth and limiting the world’s receptivity to and understanding of healing. For myself, I am developing the habit before making small or big decisions, to SIMPLY stop. Ask God. Listen. Obey. Works every time!
I can’t choose just two!! My Century of Christian Science Healing book is starred and underlined, with many notes and thoughts and page numbers listed in the back (so very useful to me since my read.) As I read each healing, some, spectacularly stunning, as in during wartime, “not human condition made better but divinity made clearer” (pgs. 125-7), others, quite humble, “So as had become habit, I stood in the street and asked God what to do.” (p. 140) Yet, each healing convincingly recounts healing when turning from the problem to God. Especially meaningful to me right now are words from Captain Wallinger of Geneva Switzerland, “...if we will only reflect enough unselfed love, however adverse the material conditions, however isolated we may appear to be, our healing is absolutely certain.” (p. 89) AMEN!
P.S. I found the last two chapters of A Century of Christian Science Healing to be the spiritual meat of the book.
Ovarian cyst: A touchstone healing of mine not thought about for decades!
Marriage in 1975 took me far away from home, family, from the familiar. Soon after settling in a strange town, a doctor, related to a pregnancy issue, diagnosed an ovarian cyst. When I told him I was a Christian Scientist, he asked, “So what will you do?” I answered, “What I always do. I will pray.” He told me to return in a month. That month, I read the entire Science and Health. Three quarters of the way through was the part about chemicalization: “If patients sometimes seem worse while reading this book...” which I was, worse. Keep reading! (paraphrasing SH 446:6) I kept reading.
After 30 days, I returned to the doctor’s office convinced that no matter what he thought he saw, “Matter disappears under the microscope of Spirit.” (SH 264:21) There was nothing to be seen.
As a follow up, two years later, during the last week of my first pregnancy with the same doctor, the baby flipped to the upright position. Due to the doctor’s fear of malpractice suits, a Cesarean delivery was required.
I set off to the hospital with “Let us feel the divine energy of Spirit, bringing us into newness of life and recognizing no mortal nor material power as able to destroy. Let us rejoice that we are subject to the divine powers that be.” (SH 249:8) Whether standing on my head under the ocean...or whatever mortal position, we “leave…creation...in the hands of God, not of man, in the keeping of Spirit not matter.” (SH 521:6)
My second daughter almost two years later also flipped to the upright position close to her due date. In that week’s lesson was “Thine, O Lord, is the greatness, and the power...thou art exalted as head above all.” (I Chron 29:11) She flipped back to the preferred position just before delivery and was delivered ‘naturally.’ Both deliveries were without pain medication. To this day, when I see Nurse Mary in town, she reminds me what an example I was – that I took no medicine, that there were no complications, and my second delivery, at least in my town, was “historic” – to receive a “normal” delivery after a Cesarean delivery.
Ahem: “God’s children already created....” (SH 69:7)
My daughter’s healing of warts which completely covered her arms, hands and knees from age 3-6:
My daughter did not attend public school until first grade. Her teacher spoke to me about her warts. I then spoke to my daughter who, since she was three, had not taken notice of them, neither of us had. I told her that these were not part of her and we could do two things: go have them removed by a doctor, which could be painful and not permanent or use Christian Science which would be painless and permanent. It was her decision. At age 6, she sweetly said, “Christian Science.”
I shared with her the story of Job I had been studying that week. I told her the command the angel had given Job, even while covered in boils: “Array thyself with beauty and excellence, deck thyself with majesty and strength.” We discussed what array and deck meant, and then I asked my daughter, “How do you suppose Job was able to clothe himself with beauty and majesty while covered with boils?” She answered simply and confidently, “In his thinking.”
We then discussed what might be strong, majestic, beautiful, excellent thoughts and agreed to stand porter at the door of our thinking and not admit anything but these excellent thoughts into our thinking. We were so absorbed in this activity that neither of us noticed exactly when ALL warts disappeared – it was sometime within that very week. Her teacher asked me what we did! She knew we were Christian Scientists, and I recounted the entire healing as I have here.
Labels of dementia overcome during husband’s 10-year journey:
During his last two years: a hand that trembled became strong and deliberate, he kept up his several-miles-a-day walking schedule, slept peacefully through the night, never missed a meal and, said “I love you” to me many times throughout each day. The last communication I had with my husband happened after “his face looked up and shone bright.” (a perfect description in a healing I read from A Century of Christian Science Healing.) My husband reached out, gently laid his hand around mine, and with a strong intentional grasp, told me, “Thank you, I love you.” I didn’t realize then, it meant also good bye, or, as I have come to translate it, His AWAKENING. “His wisdom ever waketh” (Hymn 148.)
At this Easter time, this account has helped me in the face of supposedly “being robbed” of my husband. “...the lesson of the crucifixion was uninterrupted life.” (Century p. 120)
In this same helpful vein: “In other words, [Jesus] has shown us what life really is, not under the curse of mortality, but indestructible and eternal – the radiant expression of God’s own being... resurrection is a progressive experience. It does not come all at once...individual healing or AWAKENING may come in an instant, but the full emergence from mortal limitations into spiritual freedom takes immense time and growth” (Century p.232. This whole page is so cool!)
I will:
habitually STOP...ask God... listen...and obey.
not hold back from sharing (I usually don’t hold back, but I am noticing and responding to more opportunities to share helpful thoughts.)
share my extra paperback Science and Healths more generously (keeping some at work, in my car and at home – I have many since inheriting Christian Science books from my relatives.)
not limit others’ understanding in assuming that our companion book will be too hard to understand.
not take for granted my definition of God. I realize from reading our assignment how radical and awakening Science is to a newcomer. Basic simple truths I have taken for granted, are excitingly radical. In A Century of Christian Science Healing, many who were given Science and Health (one began reading and in two months had read the textbook five times) were struck by a new definition of God* and His perfect relationship to His perfect man.
* as All, as good, as the only power and intelligence, all the time and everywhere