Article June 12, 1989 Issue

What is your motive for praying?

At some point we begin to see that spiritual healing has a far deeper purpose than simply allowing us to get on with our plans.

Marjorie C. Stephens

For several months some friends and I had been preparing to enter a popular twelve-kilometer event held annually in our area. But two days before the race I found myself in a predicament. My foot, which had become swollen and painful a few days earlier, was unhealed despite my earnest prayer. I decided to call a Christian Science practitioner to help me through prayer.

She asked, "What is your motive for praying? Is it to be healed by Saturday, or is it to glorify God?" Her intuitive questions jolted my thought. I had been concentrating so earnestly on having a change in the physical condition of my foot that my motive had little to do with knowing more about God. Yet I had learned from my study of Christian Science that understanding God and realizing more of one's true, spiritual relationship to Him are the very basis of healing. As we understand God, Spirit, better and come to see our actual identity as the child of God rather than as an ailing mortal, we begin to comprehend that we can never be separated from the divine source of all good: God. And this, in turn, shows us how illness and suffering can be overcome by prayerfully turning to God.

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June 12, 1989
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