Testimony of Healing June 8, 1981 Issue

Although for many years I had accepted Christian Science...

JOHN LINDSAY RENNIE

Although for many years I had accepted Christian Science as true and logical, at a time when I found myself suffering physically I unwittingly believed suffering to be real and powerful. Above all else I longed to be healed of the physical discomfort. The condition was that of small ulcers on one leg. During the course of a year I requested help periodically from a Christian Science practitioner and received some relief, but never during that year was I completely free of the problem.

The practitioner recommended numerous citations to study from the Bible and Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy. I was told that studying these references would help me to know myself through a better understanding of God, but that was not exactly what I wanted to do. I wanted to be free of the ulcers, and it seemed that the citations were little more than something to take my mind off a sore leg. I had yet to learn that in Christian Science the role of a patient is an active not a passive one.

There were many other things to learn as well, including the fact that God is fully present and accessible right now. Because man is His reflection, to know Him better was to know myself better. I began to listen humbly to God instead of trying to make Him hear me and, most challenging for me, to accept the discipline of obedience to God's law, with which we overcome the material senses.

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