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A life of healing through prayer
The Christian Science Teachings were the focus of the Inter-faith meeting on Easter Sunday the 15th April at the Temple of all Faiths in Reading. It was a wonderfully inspiring session where many of those who attended, not only affiliated to Christian Science, shared their healing experiences. Judy, together with Anthony Wilder, helped organise the event. Her article is an example of the essence of the teachings that the founder Mary Baker Eddy passed on to the seekers of truth in the Christian Science Fellowship.
A LIFE OF HEALING THROUGH PRAYERI had the great privilege of being brought up by a mother who was a student of Christian Science and who relied completely on God’s power and guidance for everything in life. It seemed completely normal that I was never sick even when contagious diseases were going around at school. (Christian Scientists are always law-abiding and we have inoculations if required by law, but I’d never had any apart from the usual for travel requirements).
Occasionally, I’d go down with a cold or flu, but I would crawl into Mum's bed in the morning, when she would be studying our weekly Bible Lesson,completely expectant of healing and it always came, often instantaneously after she'd read the Lesson out loud to me. In fact, it was not until many years later, when I’d applied for a job with British Airways as cabin crew and had to have a medical that I realised just how protected I had been. There was a sheet with every disease imaginable on it and I had to tick a YES or No box to let them know whether I’d had it or not. Well, the only time I’d ever had any childhood diseases was when my mother was away in England (we lived out in Singapore) and my father had the responsibility of looking after my brother and I.
He was not a Christian Scientist and was very fearful – in fact, I'd say he was verging on being a hypochondriac! Anyway, I looked down this long list, ticked the YES box by mumps then proceeded to draw a line right through all the others. The doctor went mad! He picked up the list and started going through each disease one by one “ Chicken Pox?” “No”. “ Measles?” “No” etc. until he got to the bottom of the list and just glared at me, looking totally disbelieving. “
To live so as to keep human consciousness in constant relation with the divine, the spiritual,and the eternal, is to individualise infinite power; and this is Christian Science.” Mary Baker Eddy wrote these words. She discovered that there are laws of God based on a demonstrable divine Principle. These laws not only bring healing to every possible human predicament, but they are also laws of supply, protection and prevention (as I have experienced) and they are available to everyone right now, just as the laws of mathematics or music are freely available to all. We do have to learn them though. After all, the laws of aeronautics were available to our caveman ancestors but they weren’t aware of them.
Let me just briefly tell you a little about Mrs Eddy before I continue with my story. She was a devout Christian, but hers was a heart in protest. She rebelled at the then popular image of a masculine Deity who sent sinners to hell and devout people to heaven and who sent suffering as a test of faith. Through the first half of her life, she was dogged by ill health and tragedy, then one day in 1866, following a fall on the ice she was declared so seriously injured that she was not expected to recover. She asked for her Bible and read one of Jesus’ healings and (in her own words): “As I read, the healing Truth dawned up on my sense; and the result was that I rose, dressed myself, and ever after was in better health than I had before enjoyed.
That short experience included a glimpse of the great fact that I have since tried to make plain to others,namely, Life in and of Spirit; this Life being the sole reality of existence” Mrs Eddy spent the next three years cut off from society, just deeply studying the Bible and she discovered these practical laws of God there. Not only was she then able to heal others, but found she was also able to teach others to heal. She eventually wrote down her discovery in a book ‘ Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures’, a book dedicated to “ honest seekers for Truth” and it has continued to bring healing and regeneration to all who digest its new ideas. Though it is anon-denominational book, it also forms one half of the Pastor of the Church of Christ, Scientist ( the other half being of course, the Bible).
Our weekly Bible Lessons which consist of six sections, are studied daily by students of this Science and we use it to pray for the world as well as for challenges closer to home. On Sundays, we come together in churches in many countries to hear this same Lesson reads out by two Readers,one reading the Bible and the other correlative passages from Science and Health.
Well, I did get the job with British Airways and I’d like to relate a healing I had during the years I flew long –haul. This healing was just one of dozens I’ve had and continue to have: I had a tiny pocket-sized set of books that had belonged to a soldier in the Second World War. Unfortunately, I went and left them in a hotel room, so before my next trip, I asked my mother if she had any spare and she found me an old leather Science and Health, with several chalk marks in it.She didn’t have a spare Bible, but that didn’t worry me, as there are nearly always Bibles in hotels, thanks to the Gideons.
Our first stop was Delhi. As Mum didn’t have a spare booklet with our Quarterly Bible Lesson citations I said I’d go to the Christian Science Reading Room there and get one. Unfortunately it was closed when I visited, so I had to continue on to Hong Kong without one. The morning after arriving in Hong Kong I felt very ill – I prayed for myself in a half-hearted way and managed to get back on the aircraft to fly down to Sydney but wasn’t able to do any work on board. My fellow crew members were very concerned about me and took me to the company doctor who diagnosed dysentery and gave me some tablets. I was wretched and full of self-pity. I felt a million miles away from home and from God and what a time to be without my Bible Lessons! (Of course, we actually can never be separated from God for as St Paul says in Acts: “ in Him we live, and move, and have our being;”) My crew flew on to Melbourne the next day and the hotel didn’t tell any other crews I was there –in fact, they seemed to have forgotten me. The “ Do Not Disturb” notice was outside my door and no one checked up on me for three or four days, while I continued getting weaker and weaker until I could not even retain a glass of water. But I’m getting ahead of myself” Though I had relied on the greatest Physician all my life and had never taken medicine, I had decided that as I was being ill on Company time I ought to be obedient and take the tablets the doctor had given me. (There are dedicated healers called Christian Science Practitioners who are available 24 hours a day to pray for healing but I didn’t even have the energy to try to find one or make a long distance call.) What I did do though, was decide that I would have my own Bible Lesson each day. I would pick up the Gideon Bible and read whatever my eye fell on (and I started noticing that the same stories and verses kept appearing), then I would pick up my mother’s old Science and Health. It always fell open to page 407 where some blue chalk markings noted this passage:“ In Science, all being is eternal, spiritual, perfect, and harmonious in every action. Let the perfect model be present in your thoughts instead of its demoralised opposite.
This spiritualization of thought lets in the light and brings the divine Mind, Life not death, into your consciousness.” Well as I read it, I realised it was very appropriate, but just assumed there was a weakness in the spine of the book which made it fall open every single time to that page. Several other verses from the Bible and Science and Health would also come to thought and I was aware of a pattern developing.
As I lay there, I also reasoned that all over the world, at every second, there were people praying for all mankind and that I was included in their prayers. This gave me great comfort. As I said earlier, I had become gravely ill and was very dehydrated and weak. Well, I suddenly realised that I had been trying to “ serve two masters” and as Jesus said, that just doesn’t work. So the next time I opened Science and Health to those words, I decided it was time to “Let the perfect model be present in (my) thoughts instead of its demoralise opposite” I crawled out of bed on my hands and knees (I was too weak and faint to even stand up) and flushed the pills down the toilet. I then forced myself to sit upright in a chair and just turned to God with all my heart, like a little child putting its complete trust in its parents. After a few moments, there was a rumbling in my stomach and I jumped up, instantly well, feeling such joy and gratitude – all energy and appetite back to normal. The hotel was on Bondi Beach and I ran along the beach and just felt like hugging everyone I saw! After that, I went into a steak house and had an enormous mixed grill with no bad effects whatsoever.
The most wonderful part of the healing though came the next day, a Sunday, when I took myself off to the nearest Christian Science church. I was in awe as I heard every work that I had either opened the books to or that had come into my thought (yes, including the bit on page 407) read out loud from the desk! It was so clear that right where I had felt so alone and miserable, my Father-Mother God, omnipresent and omnipotent Love, had been right with me, caring, companioning and feeding me with spiritual nourishment.
JUDY MACPHERSON
PS The next time I opened the Science and Health to re-read that passage, it opened to another page. In fact, I had to get a Concordance to find it. Even though that book had always opened (dozens of times) to the same page, once I’d had the healing, it never happened again.
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