Article January 27, 2003 Issue

prayer that heals —simple, but profound

BY Judy Olson

I'VE HEARD IT SAID that the most prayed prayer in the world consists of these three words: "Help me, God." Short, sweet, and to the point. And when this prayer is more than words—when it's straight from the heart and backed by an unshakable conviction that God can help—it has tremendous power.

For one person I've read about, a 19th-century sea captain named Joseph Eastaman, "God, help me" was his prayer for more than 60 years. "With this little prayer in my thought," he wrote in a letter to Mary Baker Eddy, who started the Sentinel in 1898, "I have conquered attacks of pirates in the China seas, the mutinies of sailors on board the ship, hard gales, hurricanes, tempests on the high seas, disasters, shipwrecks, lee shores, lack of provisions and water, and worst of all, the enmity of men" (Robert Peel, Mary Baker Eddy: The Years of Trial (Boston: The Christian Science Publishing Society, 1977), p. 286). [The full letter is available in The Mary Baker Eddy Library for the Betterment of Humanity.]

Before I heard this about Captain Eastaman, I had begun reading Mary Baker Eddy's book Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, which showed me convincingly that relying on God is, indeed, sufficient for solving any problem I could ever have. From then on, I was committed to turning to Him for every need. But before long, this commitment was severely tested when I became extremely ill with an upper respiratory condition.