Testimony of Healing September 6, 1993 Issue

There was a period in my life when I wondered what had...

Susanne B. Sommer

There was a period in my life when I wondered what had happened to the peace and order our family had previously known, It started one day when we received a telephone call from South Africa, where our son had been working for a year. The caller said, "This is not good news. You son was killed in a fall while hiking."

This proved to be a turning point for the members of our family, but it first was very tragic. My husband sold his business; another son suffered from depression and felt life wasn't worth living; our youngest son was also deeply affected by the loss of his big brother.

In spite of this dark time, I knew God was there. I felt I was only an observer to this chaos, and asked a Christian Science practitioner to help me understand God's control in this family situation. A helpful citation from Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy was "Sorrow is salutary. Through great tribulation we enter the kingdom. Trials are proofs of God's care. Spiritual development germinates not from seed sown in the soil of material hopes, but when these decay, Love propagates anew the higher joys of Spirit, which have no taint of earth. Each successive stage of experience unfolds new views of divine goodness and love" (p. 66).

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