Article November 3, 2008 Issue

SUDDEN LIGHT

A request for prayer, a moment of inspiration, and a whole place brightens

BY TOM YOUNG

SOMETIMES ALL IT TAKES is a single moment of spiritual enlightenment and everything changes for the better. The light of spiritual inspiration dawns and never fades. I experienced one of those moments years ago when I was a juvenile court worker.

One day, a friend who was the lead worker at our detention facility approached me and asked me to heal his sore knee through prayer. On an earlier occasion, Dave had asked me to give him Christian Science prayer-based treatment after being diagnosed with carpal tunnel syndrome. His doctor had recommended he have surgery. I agreed to pray and asked him to pray the Lord's Prayer and to read "the scientific statement of being" from Science and Health (p. 468). I explained that when he was healed he should remember that it wasn't my doing—that the power of God alone does the healing.

A complete healing quickly followed, and Dave cancelled the surgery. He happily told other juvenile court staff members about the healing, and explained he'd been healed solely by Christian Science prayer. One reason he'd come to me for healing in that instance was the help he'd gained from one of the daily articles on Christian Science in The Christian Science Monitor. The article was about healing anger through prayer, and he said reading it helped him deal with a difficult supervisor. In fact, he'd carried the article in his pocket until it began to come apart from so much regular use.