Credit: Time4Thinkers

I had long had a vision for making books interactive using digital media, and toward the end of my master’s program, I brought together a cross-disciplinary team to make it happen. Early on, I often found myself sharing passages from the Bible and Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, by Mary Baker Eddy, with team members and others on campus. I remember beginning to recognize how vast the practice of Christian Science is.

Our team of four won first prize in the school’s “Future of eBooks” competition and was later accepted into a technology accelerator program in New York City. But I found myself having to handle suggestions of fear, envy, and pride—including challenges with team dynamics and fears relating to ownership rights and patents—as we prepared to release our product.

By that point we were putting in 100-hour work weeks. So to get away from the stress, we committed to spending at least three hours a day doing something we loved. For me, this meant prayer, digging into the Christian Science Bible Lesson and periodicals, reading Science and Health from cover to cover, and studying the four Gospels and the book of Revelation.

As I started meeting with investors to raise money for our company, I found that many of the conversations would turn to spirituality and a deeper desire to understand God, the divine Principle that controls all things. Soon I had people specifically asking me to pray with them. I started spending more and more time praying for those who asked, for my community, and for world issues I found in The Christian Science Monitor.

I felt like there was a major shift happening in my life—that loving, listening, and sharing the Comforter with others had always been my real job. It felt right to submit my application to be listed in The Christian Science Journal, and I named several of my company’s co-founders as references.

We committed to spending three hours a day doing something we loved. For me, this meant prayer.

Not long after this, I was invited to unveil our app at the world’s largest eBook conference in San Francisco. When I arrived, I was shocked to find that it was held in a building that had previously been a Christian Science church. Then, during the conference, I received a call from the Journal to have my phone interview for listing as a practitioner! And you know what I said? “Sorry, I’m a little busy right now. Can you call back?”

I returned to the conference, but felt completely transformed—as if my pursuits and my desires and my will meant nothing. I sought a quiet place to search for an answer, and headed upstairs to what used to be the edifice—with pews and hymn numbers still intact. As I sat on the platform with my eBook reader, I swiped the screen to a random page of Scripture. This is what my eyes fell on: “I know thy works: behold, I have set before thee an open door, and no man can shut it: for thou hast a little strength, and hast kept my word, and hast not denied my name” (Revelation 3:8). 

I knew what I was being led to do. I sent an e-mail to my team announcing my resignation. I spoke with the head of the conference and thanked him for the invitation, but told him I would be unable to present that evening. I had been given, to me, the greatest invitation of all: to serve God and the world through the full-time practice of Christian Science. (The company successfully released its first product, and each co-founder has since gone on to work with established companies.)

Since then, I was asked to publicly practice Christian Science with the Los Angeles Police Department (see “Led by the Shepherd,” The Christian Science Journal, September 2012), in the Los Angeles County Jail, in schools and universities, and with people from all over the world from all kinds of faith backgrounds. There truly is no such thing as limitation once we commit our lives to serving God! Mary Baker Eddy established a system so that anyone could focus on discovering the kingdom of heaven for themselves.

I know that my going into the practice was a product of many prayers for more laborers to be sent to the harvest (see Luke 10:2). And I recognize that this prayer must not only be said with lips, but also with lives.