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.

I ate some dinner and spent another hour or so in prayer before returning to bed for the night. I slept peacefully and woke up the next morning completely healed. The best part, however, went way beyond cold symptoms dissipating. 

While I’ve loved serving my church in this role on the board, at times I’ve struggled with feeling like the nitty-gritty tasks were a distraction from the original reason I was willing to serve—to take a more active role in prayerfully supporting our branch church and its activities. When I read that e-mail, I had a sudden realization that this was what being on the board was all about: prayerfully supporting each other and the church as we go about accomplishing the various tasks at hand. The tasks do not and cannot detract from our healing mission. . . . 

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Items of Interest
Committed to Christian hope
May 14, 2012
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