Church Alive May 14, 2012 Issue

The following was written in support of Church Alive, a focus of The First Church of Christ, Scientist, that explores the meaning and possibilities of awakening to the spiritual basis and impact of Church.

Board work––a healing service

Inge Schmidt

. . . . I’m a member of the executive board at my local Christian Science branch church, and one afternoon I had a board meeting to attend. I had also been dealing with cold symptoms off and on throughout the day. As the time to leave approached, I hemmed and hawed over whether to go. Our board only meets once a month, so I felt bad that I might not be able to attend. But I also was confident that feeling close to God and experiencing healing were my first priority. I continued to ask God to guide me to where I needed to be, and I affirmed that I would willingly follow whatever that direction might be. Again and again, one thought kept coming to me: This board meeting is a healing service.

The tasks do not and cannot detract from our healing mission.

While I did attend the meeting and participated, to my surprise, by the end of the meeting, I felt utterly lousy. It was tempting to think, “So much for a healing service!” Instead, I kept coming back to this idea from a citation in the Bible Lesson that week pointing out that man is “the humble servant of the restful Mind” (Science and Health, p. 119). I didn’t analyze this concept, reason with it, or deconstruct it in any way. I just held on to it, knowing that I had gone to that board meeting as a humble servant and could only be blessed by serving the restful divine Mind. Once home, I fell asleep for a while with this idea washing over my thought. . . . When I woke up, I first checked my e-mail and found one from a fellow board member. It was a sweet note, letting me know that no one had been ignoring what I had been dealing with, but instead, they all were prayerfully supporting me. . . . I knew that their love was the expression of divine Love, actively bringing rest and healing right in that moment.

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