Article March 15, 1947 Issue

Seven Times

GLADYS P. DOMERATZKY

Many students of Christian Science have known the joy of one or more instantaneous healings. They know also the joy of being delivered from conditions that threaten to spell disaster—a disease that seems to be developing, or a catastrophe that appears to be impending. Awareness of the omnipresence of God, of infinite, omniactive Love maintaining the integrity, harmony and perfection of man's being, delivers us from these erroneous suggestions. There may be times, however, in the experience of Christian Scientists when some untoward condition or circumstance seems difficult to overcome. Then is the time for them to remember the value of persistence.

Mary Baker Eddy reminds us in "Miscellaneous Writings" (p. 340) that "the lives of great men and women are miracles of patience and perseverance." Do we always remember this when false sense seems to bind, oppress, or frighten us, when a disease seems real, when social, business, or family conditions seem depressing, or disaster appears inevitable? Are we not sometimes like Naaman, who expected an instantaneous healing without being obedient to the divine requirements?

Naaman turned away in a rage when Elisha commanded that he wash seven times in the river Jordan. But "his servants came near, and spake unto him, and said, My father, if the prophet had bid thee do some great thing, wouldest thou not have done it? how much rather then, when he saith to thee, Wash, and be clean?" Naaman was thus persuaded to obey and to persist. He "dipped himself seven times in Jordan" and was recovered of his leprosy.

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