Testimony of Healing February 1, 1999 Issue

Injured thumb and burned arm quickly healed

Nancy Lavender Bryan

After graduating from high school, I traveled to Hawaii with my parents. On a drive through an undeveloped part of the island of Kauai, we stopped at a scenic overlook, and, as we got back in the car, my mother accidentally shut the car door on my thumb. The pain was intense.

At first, it was hard to think, and I was glad my parents immediately began praying aloud, using ideas from the Bible and Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy. That helped me get past the initial shock and begin praying silently for myself. The first clear idea that came was, "Accidents are unknown to God." The full sentence reads, "Accidents are unknown to God, or immortal Mind, and we must leave the mortal basis of belief and unite with the one Mind, in order to change the notion of chance to the proper sense of God's unerring direction and thus bring out harmony" (Science and Health, p. 424). I reasoned that if this is true, then no accident had actually happened to me, despite any physical evidence to the contrary. I clung to this one thought for some time.

I hadn't looked at my thumb when it was released from the door, but later I unwrapped the handkerchief I'd put around it and saw that my thumb wasn't bleeding, but there was a deep pinch mark in the flesh and the finger was quite swollen. I was fearful that it might be broken.

Send a comment to the editors

NEXT IN THIS ISSUE

Testimony of Healing

Love melts stepchild's anger and resistance