Article August 27, 1979 Issue

Reason for rejoicing!

JUDITH ANN HARDY

Rejoice! That sounds like what you do after a victory, doesn't it? After all, you can't rejoice unless you're happy, and you can't be happy without something to be happy about. Yet rejoicing is just what Jehoshaphat and his small band of men did right in the midst of trouble, threatened with extinction by a coalition of enemies.

"Rejoice!" was also the immediate reply of a Christian Science practitioner I had called for aid through prayer. She said it so happily, too. So genuinely and imperatively.

How could I possibly be joyful now, I protested. Our son had a skin disease. The more I tried to pray, the worse it seemed to become. And the more my husband worried. Then the more anxious I became. The more anxious I became, the more aggravated the disease symptoms became and the more discomfort our little boy suffered. To top it off, we were required to have a doctor's statement saying the trouble was not contagious before our son could return to school. And we feared that relatives who were arriving for a weekend visit would criticize us for not calling a doctor.

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