by Judy Cole
The Christian Science Journal, April 2024
As a teenager, I was working above a new display of soda pop at my job in a grocery store when some bottlesexploded, sending shards of glass into my face and eyes. Soon after, I sat alone in a hospital emergency room waiting for my mother to arrive to authorize medical treatment because I was a minor. Staffing was lighter than usual because it was Christmas Eve, so a specialist doctor was called to come to the hospital to treat me due to the serious injuries.
Rather than focus on the accident or the injuries or the fears voiced by observers, I prayed to God, whom I knew as loving, just, and ever present from my study of the Bible in the Christian Science Sunday School I attended. Soon I felt a peaceful certainty of God’s, divine Love’s, constant care for me, and knew that God, good, was present and all-power. I also knew that divine Love’s care includes everyone; and this was helpful because I didn’t want the store manager and others who saw the injuries to worry about me. I was thanking God in my prayers when the specialist arrived.
Following the doctor’s examination, I was not admitted to the hospital because there was no longer any glass in my eyes to be removed, and no evidence of damage to them. There was also clear, smooth skin on my face where cuts had been. The physical healing was so complete that the doctor questioned why he’d even been called, but the admissions nurse assured him that my condition had been very serious when I’d arrived at the hospital earlier.
The hours of prayer in that hospital waiting room led me to a heartfelt gratitude and a deep desire to better understand God and Christian Science.
After this experience, I began reading the weekly Bible Lessons from the Christian Science Quarterly every day, intending to apply in healing what I was learning from the Bible and its companion, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy. The experience was a turning point for me in recognizing Christ Jesus as the Exemplar to whom Mrs. Eddy leads us through her writings. These writings explain the operation of divine law, as demonstrated by Jesus, which I was finding both inspiring and practical.
I happily continued to grow spiritually and experienced more healings. I was soon being asked by others to pray for them, too. My heart leapt with gratitude as my hunger to know and do good, as well as the longing to help others that I’d felt since I was a child, was being answered. And I could now explain the reason for the deep peace I’d found in trusting God that night at the hospital, which has remained with me even through my darkest times.
Mrs. Eddy’s leadership of the Christian Science movement is not dictatorial but God-ordained, and never was self-centered. In fact, she repeatedly cautioned against personal adulation and wrote: “Those who look for me in person, or elsewhere than in my writings, lose me instead of find me” (The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany, p. 120). And: “. . . follow your Leader only so far as she follows Christ” (Message to The Mother Church for 1901, p. 34).
It is through studying the Bible and Mrs. Eddy’s writings that I have gained a deeper understanding of God and His Christ, and a sincere appreciation for Mrs. Eddy as a follower of Christ. My study has led me to discover new vistas of practical Christianity, revealing the certainty that we are never helpless.
For example, an employer once refused to pay me for my completed work and indicated that I had no recourse, as he was the decision maker. I learned from studying the Christian Science textbook that I could, through prayer, appeal to the supremacy of God as divine Principle, which overcomes injustice and dishonesty. Science and Health explains: “The power of Christian Science and divine Love is omnipotent. It is indeed adequate to unclasp the hold and to destroy disease, sin, and death” (p. 412). Within days, without any action on my part but prayer, this employer reached out to me, apologized, and paid me what was rightfully owed.
I love that Christian Science directs me to strive daily for growth in grace, patience, meekness, and unselfed love evidenced by good deeds (see Science and Health, p. 4). I am inspired to be better—to give more, seek to know God better, and more faithfully follow Christ Jesus, our Way-shower. The teachings of Christian Science make me go deeper in my Bible study and sit longer in quiet contemplation, that I may grow in spiritual understanding. Mrs. Eddy’s Bible-based writings teach me how to live my faithfulness to God in practical ways through my works.
Our beloved Leader unselfishly shared her healing inspiration and extended an invitation to all to “drink with me the living waters of the spirit of my life-purpose,—to impress humanity with the genuine recognition of practical, operative Christian Science” (Miscellaneous Writings 1883–1896, p. 207).
As we dig deeper into the Bible in the light of Christian Science, we find comfort, inspiration, and guidance in meeting every condition of human experience. Just as I would value and appreciate a guide who showed me the way out of a dense forest, so I value and appreciate these practical spiritual guides that show us how to love more and to bring help and healing to others.
Mrs. Eddy proved her place in prophecy and religious history as the Discoverer and Founder of the Science of Christ, which is the Comforter Christ Jesus promised would lead into all truth. Her writings and the Church she established continue to serve and bless mankind, as they help to open the Bible to us and lead us upward in knowing God. ##
https://journal.christianscience.com/issues/2024/4/142-04/the-writings-that-lead-us-to-god
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