While at summer camp following my junior year in high school, I suddenly became ill at dinner one evening. I left the dining hall and went to my cabin.

Although I felt sick, I had been taught that I could turn to God for help. In Sunday School, I had learned the "scientific statement of being," and I began to repeat it from memory (see Science and Health, p. 468). It begins: "There is no life, truth, intelligence, nor substance in matter. All is infinite Mind and its infinite manifestation, for God is All-in-all."

After saying this to myself several times, I felt no better. I was about ready to give up and simply feel sorry for myself. But I still realized that feeling sick was not something that I had to just accept. With renewed vigor, I prayed to prove that sickness could not affect my perfection from God. Alone in that cabin in the woods, I persisted and emphatically refused to believe that sickness was substantial and possessed intelligence. I even said aloud that God was good, and was all-power.

Then the most wonderful thing happened. Suddenly, I was well. All at once the illness had simply vanished! I was amazed, and then felt so grateful. The truth of what I'd been praying with had taken root in my consciousness, and I understood with new conviction that God was All. This was the first time I proved for myself—without help from family members or a Christian Science practitioner—the power of prayer.

Later, when I was in college, Christian Science was invaluable to me. During my senior year, I was studying marketing research. When it came time to review the text material and class notes for the midterm exam, I had a bad cold and couldn't concentrate on studying because of how I was feeling. I wanted to do well on the test, had faithfully attended the classes, and had completed all assignments. But now it was a struggle to study, and I was making very little progress.

On top of this, I was worried—there simply wasn't enough time to prepare for the test.

It was at this point that I decided to discard all attempts at studying. Recognizing my own inability to prepare for the exam in time, I turned to God in prayer. As I prayed, I saw that the concept of time was actually a manmade limitation. I knew that God would never allow His sons and daughters to become trapped in a situation from which they could not be liberated.

The idea of God being Mind—always prepared, all-knowing, intelligent—dawned on me. It became clear that it did not have to take a prescribed amount of study time for me to be ready for the exam. I realized that intelligence, as a quality of divine Mind, was always available and present. It did not take minutes or hours to acquire it.

I really loved the concept that the wisdom and intelligence of Mind are continuously and instantaneously available to God's reflection, which means each one of us.

The test consisted of three essay questions. The day of the test I was still not feeling 100 percent. But ideas flowed nonstop and in an orderly fashion. The answers I was writing were different from what they would have been if I had prepared in the conventional way. In fact, I was surprised at the answers even as I wrote them! I was relying totally on divine Mind.

The professor remarked that my answers were unusual, but that he could find nothing that was wrong. I received a perfect grade. And a total healing of the cold quickly followed.

David Pocklington
Grand Rapids, Michigan