Article January 17, 1994 Issue

Refuting the lie

Prayer that starts from the right basis shows spiritual healing to be natural and dependable.

Muriel Purse

"It's a lie!" he said. I was sitting on the telephone seat in the hall of my home. A few minutes earlier I had telephoned a Christian Science practitioner to ask for help through prayer. Now I wondered, How could he say that? Hadn't he listened to me? He wasn't here going through all this!

As I recall the incident now, many years later, I was troubled about a recurring physical difficulty that caused me considerable distress and interfered with my demanding work as a teacher. I longed to be free and to understand why the problem was "a lie."

Now, while that sickness certainly did seem very real and solid to a physical perception of things, the practitioner was speaking to me from his Bible-based understanding of the true nature of God and of man as His image and likeness. From this standpoint it could be recognized that the problem was not the reality it seemed to be. Because God is Spirit, infinite Love, wholly loving and good, He could not have created sickness or created His image, man, subject to it. And it is on the basis of this absolute truth that I was healed. It is on this basis that we too can heal sickness or any other discord through prayer.

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