STAYING WITH GOD

[Of Special Interest to Children]

COURTNEY CORNISH KING

"Mother , I'm so glad I'm a Christian Scientist, and I wish everyone in the world was!" Charles had often made this statement to his mother. Especially when everything was fine with him. Sometimes he would say it when a little friend could not play outside because his mother was afraid he would catch cold or be sick. Then one day Charles had to prove just how glad he was.

He was in the third grade and learning to write instead of to print. He had to hold his pen or pencil just right to make the letters pretty. But he was having trouble. Something was wrong. He could not hold his pen right because it hurt his finger. And then he saw that something ugly seemed to be growing on his finger.

Charles tried to play ball during recess, because he was on the team. But every time he tried to catch the ball, he dropped it when it hit this hand. So all the boys and girls at school knew about his finger and asked him what he was going to do about it. He knew what he was going to do.

That day he brought home a note from his schoolteacher saying that until the growth was removed from his finger he could not play ball. The teacher also said that because of the growth his writing was very bad.

It was Wednesday. Now Charles did not usually go with his parents to the testimony meeting in the Christian Science church because this meeting was past his bedtime. But this night he wanted to go. He said maybe someone would tell about a healing of a growth on a finger and he wanted to hear it.

Sure enough, that night a woman told of just that! When she started to speak, Charles sat up very straight, his eyes brightened, and he listened very carefully. The woman said that she had called a Christian Science practitioner to help her. So when church was over, Charles asked his mother for the telephone number of a practitioner. He called her that very night.

Each day he called the practitioner and they talked of God's perfect man and of the verse in Genesis (1:31), "God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good." Now this thing on his finger was not good; so God did not make it.

Every day the boys and girls at school, as well as his teacher, asked him what he was doing about his finger. It took a lot of courage for him to be a Christian Scientist.

Then one day when Charles arrived home for lunch, his mother saw that he was worried and very quiet. Finally, he said, "A boy at school told me that an electric needle could take this off real easy."

"Why, Charles," his mother said, "you don't believe that an electric needle has more power than God, or that it can do something that God can't do!" Why, no, he didn't.

Then his mother opened "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mary Baker Eddy to page 368 and read, "When we come to have more faith in the truth of being than we have in error, more faith in Spirit than in matter, more faith in living than in dying, more faith in God than in man, then no material suppositions can prevent us from healing the sick and destroying error."

So Charles decided to stay with God and with what he believed was right, no matter what anyone said.

The very next day the growth started to dry up. A day or so later, while he was playing, it just fell off and left nice smooth skin underneath. He could play ball again, and at the end of the term he made a good grade in writing. And everyone at school knew that he had been healed through Christian Science.

The night following his healing, when his mother went in to kiss him good night, Charles said, "Mother, I'm so glad I'm a Christian Scientist, and I wish everyone in the world was." And he really meant it, because now he had proved it for himself.

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GRADUATION AND PROGRESS

June 4, 1955

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