I learned an important object lesson while removing a tree stump in our back yard several years ago. I started the job with some trepidation because the stump was solid red oak and ominously large. I went to work with my trusty chain saw, but each time I got deep into the heart of the stump, my blade would strike something hard—I feared a limestone boulder, prevalent in our neighborhood—that would dull it immediately and render it useless. I went through saw blade after saw blade, whittling only small slivers off the whole stump. 

This situation got me thinking about how I tackle what feels like insurmountable tasks in my experience. There’s a deep satisfaction found in achieving victory over a problem. How many challenges, though, would have us give up and give in? If we were to listen to and believe the “accepted wisdom” surrounding a particular disorder, work or family situation, or other challenge, we might be tempted to see it as too big for us to handle. Christian Science throws a different light on such a fear and turns it around with the question: How large is a lie? Mary Baker Eddy wrote in Science and Health: “The more difficult seems the material condition to be overcome by Spirit, the stronger should be our faith and the purer our love” (p. 410).

If we agree that a lie has no validity or foundation to stand on, then size doesn’t matter. I can remember ordering one of those oversized “puncture-proof” balloons from a comic book and inflating it outside when I was a kid. It was so large I could barely get my arms around it. As I carried it into the house, the balloon struck a nail and burst, my arms crossing in front of me. In the blink of an eye, it was gone. Where was its validity? It was hanging on a thin lie that rubber can’t break, and balloons don’t pop. When the time comes for a lie to stand up and fight, it will always flee.

About nine years ago, for a period of several months, I suffered from headaches on weekends. I prayed with the support of a Christian Science practitioner, releasing human will and desiring divine direction. I felt that my thought was not balanced, and at one point the practitioner mentioned the idea of disciplining thought. As I prayed for any error in that area to be uncovered, I recognized that I had been feeling anxiety at work and indulging lazy, undisciplined thought on the weekends.

When the time comes for a lie to stand up and fight, it will always flee.

By facing work-related fears, and realizing my dominion as a reflection of God and not a mortal stuck in a job I did not like, those fears lost their hold on my thought. My attitude toward my job improved greatly. The newfound freedom from boredom and fear led to a natural restructuring of my time away from work, and the discipline of organized thinking displaced lazy thought. Once you learn to ride a bike, you don’t go back to training wheels. The headaches ended, and I have been free of them for over eight years.

What does all this have to do with the stump? I discovered, as I whittled, that the tree was rotten at its base underground. Whole chunks of wood, when challenged, would come off in my hands. They had no foundation, no strength to resist. My initial reluctance turned into joy as I saw more of that formidable stump disappear. 

Just think how many times a stubborn issue has backed down in your experience when challenged through prayer. If it has happened once, then there is no limit to how many times it can be proved again. Mrs. Eddy wrote in Science and Health: “By lifting thought above error, or disease, and contending persistently for truth, you destroy error” (p. 400).

When I removed enough of the stump and other debris around it, I finally found the culprit at the heart of the stump, which had been standing as an obstacle to my work. Rather than a large limestone boulder, as I had suspected it to be, it turned out to be a small flat piece of limestone no larger than the palm of my hand. But deeply scored on its face were the cuts I had made with my chain saw—in the perfect shape of a cross.

What a lesson of grace this was for me. The mark of the Christ, you could say, had branded the obstacle that had so deterred my efforts to extract it. The supposition that a boulder was standing in the way proved baseless when challenged with fearless persistence.

One reason I choose to study and practice Christian Science is because its teachings, when followed, allow the student to prove in his or her own experience the words of Jesus: “If ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye shall say unto this mountain, Remove hence to yonder place; and it shall remove; and nothing shall be impossible unto you” (Matthew 17:20).