Testimony of Healing October 11, 1999 Issue

Freedom of movement restored

Judith Durning

My concept of who and what governs was being shaken by some information I had been hearing and reading, to the point that I appeared to be literally "scared stiff." In the fall of 1993 my whole body began to stiffen. Normal activity became difficult. Some things I couldn't do at all, and by the beginning of the next year, movement was very painful. I had made attempts to pray as I had been taught to do in Christian Science, and had telephone conversation and treatment from a Christian Science practitioner about once or twice a week. At first my focus was more on sharing what I had found out rather than on healing. But by mid-January I knew I had to stop talking and start praying. I needed to focus my complete attention on God and on my relation to Him. I began to talk with a practitioner daily.

As Science and Health points out, "The way to extract error from mortal mind is to pour in truth through flood-tides of Love" (p. 201), and this is what we did. I became like a sponge ready to receive daily inspiration from the thoughts the practitioner shared and from my own study of the Bible, the writings of Mary Baker Eddy, hymns from the Christian Science Hymnal, and articles from other Christian Science publications. Examples of statements that strengthened my thinking as well as my body were: "I will overturn, overturn, overturn, it: and it shall be no more, until he come whose right it is; and I will give it him" from Ezekiel (21:27), and ". . . 'of his kingdom there shall be no end,' for Christ, God's idea, will eventually rule all nations and peoples—imperatively, absolutely, finally—with divine Science" (Science and Health, p. 565).

The practitioner reminded me almost daily over the next several months of the first sentence in Science and Health: "To those leaning on the sustaining infinite, to-day is big with blessings" (p. vii). She would urge me frequently to lean. As I leaned on this sustaining infinite, it became clearer and clearer that God is our government and that the operation of the divine Principle is ". . . a divine influence ever present in human consciousness . . ." (ibid., p. xi). As a spiritual idea, every elected and appointed office is not only governed and controlled by, but also cannot help being receptive and responsive to, this divine influence. On the sixth day of this intensive treatment, the pain disappeared.