Testimony of Healing April 3, 1978 Issue

Seven years ago I went into the general contracting business

Andrew C. Johnson

Seven years ago I went into the general contracting business. I knew that in order for this new business to be a success it was imperative that it have a firm foundation of ethics and operate upon precepts of Principle.

Things worked out well until a time came when I had finished a job and began to look for another to bid. I searched for weeks before I was invited to bid on a service station to be built locally. I picked up the plans and specifications and began to prepare my bid when I was contacted by the owners. They informed me that the successful bidder would have an opportunity to contract to build a second service station at another nearby location. This, to me, was very good news—a two-for-one proposition. I continued to compile my bid with a renewed determination and hope. In the meantime I called a Christian Science practitioner to tell him of the good news, and to ask him for prayerful support. I wanted everyone involved to be blessed—whether I was awarded the contract or not. Finally I submitted my bid, and was later notified that I was not the successful bidder. This was quite disturbing to me. Momentarily, I forgot my prayerful approach. I thought that I just had to have a job, this job; I was unemployed!

I began to search the books, the Bible, and Science and Health by Mrs. Eddy, and other authorized Christian Science literature. I read an article in the Sentinel that brought out the thought that man is always employed, because God is forever employing or using His offspring to express His own intelligent activity and plan. The Apostle Paul set forth this fact and its effect on mankind when he wrote (Phil. 2: 13), "It is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure." I continued to ponder this and to acknowledge that right employment is constant spiritual identification with true selfhood as the image of God. It evidences God's love in action, His truth in operation, as exemplified in the works of the Way-shower, Christ Jesus. Acknowledgment of these spiritual facts is no ivory tower abstraction, but has healing power. In Science and Health Mrs. Eddy writes (p. 261), "Hold thought steadfastly to the enduring, the good, and the true, and you will bring these into your experience proportionably to their occupancy of your thoughts." I saw that as the true concept of employment becomes firmly established in one's understanding, rewarding employment appears in his experience.