Article December 21, 1987 Issue

Entitled—to what?

Do we realize that healing is included in our spiritual rights?

Mary Elizabeth Leever

My husband and I had returned from a four-month business trip which, with family activities along the way, had been mentally and physically demanding. As we'd begun the long journey home, involving an airline trip and a three-day drive, I had announced my intention to sleep for a week once I got in my own bed.

I'd been joking. But now it appeared I was well on the way to fulfilling my prophecy! During the drive I'd been fending off the symptoms of illness, affirming what Christian Science teaches—that God has created man, my true selfhood, in His image and likeness. I claimed that inharmony of any kind has no dwelling place in God's man, no reality in His good and perfect creation.

But my affirming and claiming were intellectual. I still felt terrible! Looking back now, I have to confess that my prayerful declarations were less than wholehearted. It had occurred to me that a touch of illness would furnish such a convenient excuse to snuggle under the covers, pamper myself for a few days, and forget the world and all its problems. I was entitled!

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