The founder of this magazine, Mary Baker Eddy, wrote in reference to Christ Jesus: "Our Master's first article of faith propounded to his students was healing, and he proved his faith by his works" (Science and Health, pp. 145–146). And through the scientific prayer Mrs. Eddy taught in Christian Science, which is based on Jesus' words and works, millions have depended on God for healing and have not been disappointed.

Understandably, when they feel ill or have some other physical difficulty, many people seek medical help. They see a physician, undergo an examination, get a diagnosis, hear a prognosis, and often begin medicinal or surgical treatment for the body. Others make a very different but no less valid decision to have spiritual treatment. This involves prayer based on one's understanding of God as Spirit, Life, Love—as the Bible defines Him—who creates us and maintains us as His likeness in an inseparable, unchanging, always dependable relationship.

What it comes down to is this: When you need to make a healthcare choice, are you examining body or thought, the physical or the mental, the material or the spiritual, to decide which way to turn for healing? Are you ready to rely completely on the power of God's sustaining love and healing care, which are plentifully evident in the Old and New Testaments of the Bible? The theology of Christian Science is as simple and practical as turning to God with all our heart to find the truth that makes us free from believing in another, or opposing, power.

God's power, and my reliance on it, played a key role in an experience I had one winter's day when I was driving home from teaching in an elementary school in the small city of Cedar Falls, Iowa. The late Friday afternoon sky was very overcast. The streets were extremely icy. As I slowed down for a stop sign at the top of a hill, my car slid right through the intersection and hit the midsection of a car approaching from my right. In it were a woman and her three children.

Even though the steering wheel had painfully knocked the wind out of my chest, and the protruding dials on the dashboard had gashed both knees, I felt impelled to get out of my car and run to see that the woman and her children were safe. To my relief, I found that they were unhurt. Their car had suffered damage to the doors on the driver's side, but could be driven without mechanical difficulty. So, after we had exchanged phone numbers and they had assured me they were all fine, they drove home.

I recall that as our cars collided, I had instinctively called out to God in prayer, insisting that as children of His creating, we each lived and moved and had our being in Him (see Acts 17:28). God's presence and power were more than adequate to protect everyone involved in the collision, not only from injury, but from any aftereffects. Because that fact was not yet fully evident, I continued to pray, reasoning that the term accident means something happening by chance from an unexpected cause. My study of the Bible and Science and Health had assured me that God is the one and only Cause, and that the result of the one Cause is always good. This might have been in conflict with the material scene I faced, yet I stayed with the truth that "God is not the author of mortal discords" and that "... there are no antagonistic powers nor laws, spiritual or material, creating and governing man ..." (Science and Health, p. 231).

By this time, a friendly neighbor who saw the incident had called an ambulance, and I explained to the medical technician and to a police officer who had accompanied the ambulance why I didn't consider it necessary to go to a nearby hospital for attention. They accepted my choice to rely on spiritual healing for the obvious bangs and bruises, but the officer insisted on following me as I drove home in my badly damaged car. He wanted to satisfy himself that I was in a fit state to drive safely.

The trip home was uneventful. I felt the love of God promised in the 91st Psalm. Not for a moment did I doubt that His angel messages do have charge to keep each of us in all our ways.

After removing my blood-soiled clothing, and bathing, I again thanked God for the fact of His care, in which each of us had been, and were still, embraced. Security, protection, and restoration are mental properties of our God-given dominion. Yet waves of guilt tried to flood my thought. Had I been driving too fast on the ice-covered street? Had I been alert to oncoming traffic?

When I was tempted to berate myself for what might have been a mistake on my part, I considered instead a passage in an article in Mary Baker Eddy's book Unity of Good: It asks: "How is a mistake to be rectified?" Humbly I prayed to understand this compassionate correction. The answer reads: "By reversal or revision,—by seeing it in its proper light, and then turning it or turning from it" (p. 20). One doesn't gain peace of mind by avoiding the question in consciousness, and I prayed for forgiveness of any transgression of God's law or human law.

That weekend I battled concerns over the mother and her children, the necessary car repairs, and a mental picture of the incident, which threatened to diminish my confident trust in God. Frightening signs of inflammation and an enlarged discolored vein in one leg loomed up on Monday. I knew that the definition of fear in the Glossary of Science and Health included the words "heat; inflammation; anxiety" (p. 586). And I realized this evidence of blood poisoning could be nothing more than an illusion of matter, and not the truth of Spirit's pure, uncontaminated likeness.

Once more I turned to the statement in Unity of Good concerning mistakes, and was totally reassured that God, Spirit, was the only cause of my entire experience, so I must be 100 percent as perfect as my creative Source. The statement outlines a clear spiritual thought process that wipes out the evidence of mistakes:

This spiritual approach to examination, diagnosis, and prognosis, allowed the healing Christ—God's message of love for His children—to fill my consciousness. Within three days, all evidence of the injury was gone.

Many times since then I have again proved that turning to God in prayer is the most valid, scientific path to healing. And anyone can make this choice—as I so gratefully did.

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