Testimony of Healing November 24, 2008 Issue

INTESTINAL PAIN HEALED

JAMES M. COLEMAN

The Gospel of Matthew gives an account of Jesus being "led up of the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil" (see Matt. 4:1—11). Though it's written as a colloquy between Jesus and Satan, I feel it could just as well have been presented as an internal dialogue, where Jesus emphatically triumphed over the attempts of the material senses to cause him to stumble. Science and Health defines wilderness in part as "the vestibule in which a material sense of things disappears, and spiritual sense unfolds the great facts of existence" (p. 597).

As I studied this account in some depth recently, I was reminded of a "wilderness" experience of my own. At the time, I was serving as a designer of large land development projects, both in the United States and overseas. In this instance, the project was located in the Middle East, while my client, an international contracting firm, was based in Europe. The client firm had summoned our US project team to meet with them. Our plane left the US late in the evening, arriving in Amsterdam early the following morning. Not having had much sleep during the flight, our team agreed to check into our hotel for a few hours' rest before meeting again for lunch.

Later, as we were seating ourselves at a restaurant, and a waitress approached to take our orders, I was suddenly stricken with severe intestinal pains. These attacks were not unfamiliar. I'd been plagued with them off and on many times. The experience, though usually of short duration, was sometimes very intense, and once I'd briefly lost consciousness. I'd certainly prayed about these attacks, but hadn't yet been able to eliminate them permanently.

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