Testimony of Healing March 28, 2011 Issue

‘At once, I turned to God’

Sallie Carlson

About seven years ago, I noticed that several joints in the fingers of one hand were rather stiff, and this made the opening and closing of that hand difficult. As a Christian Scientist, I understood that I was spiritual, and any limitation could not be the truth about myself as the image of God, good. In Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, Mary Baker Eddy wrote, “When the first symptoms of disease appear, dispute the testimony of the material senses with divine Science” (p. 390); and further down on that page, ”Suffer no claim of sin or of sickness to grow upon the thought.” In other words, begin at once to pray!

So, at once, I turned to God in prayer. Often, I declared that this difficulty was not a condition of matter, but rather an aggressive mental suggestion that I did not have to accept as my thought. I asked myself how I could believe in the allness of God and something opposite to Him as well. If God is ever present, where would something unlike Him exist? I knew that a hand, or any other part of our present concept of body, was not self-acting (see Science and Health, p. 393). This stiffness in my joints was never from God, so how could I, as His reflection, experience it?

After I prayed along this line for several weeks, however, there was no physical change. I realized that it was not so much my hand but my thought that needed healing, because our body is controlled by thought. Science and Health instructs: “Stand porter at the door of thought. Admitting only such conclusions as you wish realized in bodily results, you will control yourself harmoniously” (p. 392). It wasn’t that I had a personal mind that should be thinking “good” thoughts that would result in a good mortal outcome, but rather that since there is only one God, there was just one Mind governing me and communicating good to me. And I understood that yielding to this Mind would bring healing. 

Send a comment to the editors

NEXT IN THIS ISSUE

Testimony of Healing

Hospitality opens the way to healing