PRAYER REPLACES FEAR WITH HEALING

About a year and a half ago, I moved with my wife and four children to Malaysia because of my employment. Although we had lived overseas for many years, we felt as if we were on a grand family adventure, and we were excited about our new tropical home. Because there wasn't a branch Church of Christ, Scientist, in the country, my wife and I began holding Sunday School at home and reading the weekly Bible Lesson from the Christian Science Quarterly aloud as a family, in order to continue the church experience we so loved in our previous home city.

Two weeks after our arrival, a large, painful lump formed on my backside. At first, I ignored it, thinking it might be a spider bite or some other tropical insect bite that would just go away. But the swelling grew more painful, such that I was unable to sit and could barely walk. I felt dizzy and feverish, and was confined to the bed—able only to lie on my side. Now I saw this as an aggressive physical and mental challenge to my spiritual identity as God's perfect child, and a direct interruption of my family's harmonious transition to our new home. Fear and error had found a new home as well—in my thought, which I recognized had become passive and careless.

In the Bible Lesson that week, I read these words from Science and Health: "When the condition is present which you say induces disease ... then perform your office as porter and shut out these unhealthy thoughts and fears" (p.392). That statement hit me as strongly as if I had walked into a closed door. In the busy atmosphere of moving into a new house in a new country and culture, I realized that I had neglected dedicating sufficient time to quiet prayer.

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March 6, 2006
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