A 'do-it-yourself' project
As I walked through our home recently I noticed, and delighted in, all the DIY (do-it-yourself) projects I’ve completed: the willow baskets above the fireplace; the iron pot rack I made in a blacksmith course, then hung above the kitchen sink; the tiny summer house I built, which is just right for a hammock in our garden—all things I’d built myself. (Well, OK, the summer house needed four hands to hold up walls and the roof while we measured and hammered!)
I believe that’s the way it is with healing. Whenever there is a need—whether it’s financial, physical, employment related, or anything else—we learn to go straight to the Father for answers, for direction, for healing. There’s no go-between to get to God. Each of us can learn to heal ourselves, since healing really happens in our own thought.
Yet, as with the summer house, sometimes we need someone to help out. A Christian Science practitioner can support our prayerful efforts and can encourage us to work at finding our own relationship to God. When we invite a practitioner to pray with us, he or she can remind us to deny anything unlike God, good, and then replace that with the truth about God’s idea, perfect man. That’s you! A practitioner’s work enables us to do our own work. A practitioner can hold up the walls while we hammer away—and sometimes, when there’s a need, the practitioner can hammer away while we simply rest in the truth of the Christian Science treatment being given.
Jesus’ healings serve as an example of what we can accomplish today. In Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, Mary Baker Eddy wrote this about Jesus: “He did life’s work aright not only in justice to himself, but in mercy to mortals,—to show them how to do theirs, but not to do it for them nor to relieve them of a single responsibility” (p. 18 ).
We should all think of ourselves as first-generation descendants of God, meaning that we have a direct and powerful connection to Him no matter how many years we’ve been studying Christian Science, or how often a challenge rears its head. Healing comes in that one moment when we feel, really feel, God’s presence. Reading Science and Health is like taking a class in genealogy—learning to trace our parentage, our heritage, as children of God.
As we learn to go to God in prayer, we learn that no bargaining is allowed. We don’t start our prayers by begging, or pleading for God to heal us. I often laugh at a time on a river bank when my husband yelled above the sound of crashing lightning and thunder all around us: “God, if you get us out of this storm alive, I promise never to smoke again.” The funny part was that he never had smoked! Even in that terrifying storm he had the good sense to laugh at the idea of making deals with God.
We should all think of ourselves as first-generation descendants of God, meaning that we have a direct and powerful connection to Him.
In the late 1980s I worked in Russia for several years, and my husband and I began to invite taxi drivers, students, mathematicians, bakers—anyone who wanted to practice speaking English—to come to our home every Tuesday evening. We’d sit in a circle on the floor and speak English together, something the Russians hadn’t done, since it was still a Communist country and foreigners were few and far between. One Tuesday night someone asked if we would read something in English so they could hear the melody, the lilt, of the language. I reached over to my desk and picked up the first book I came to, Science and Health. As I began to read aloud from page 465 , where the question is asked, “What is God?” I heard whispers from around the circle. This was Communist Russia, where religious teaching wasn’t allowed. Our guests were whispering things like, “I know that” and “That’s true” as they heard these ideas about God and man for the first time in their lives.
We lived in Moscow long enough to see the barricades, the tanks rolling through the streets, the change from Communism to democracy. One of the first things my husband and I did after the dust settled was to have an appointment with the mayor of Moscow and ask him for a church where we could hold services with those students who had come each week to our house to learn more about English—and Christian Science. He obliged, and the next week, at the first membership meeting, one woman was nominated to be the president of the new little group. Remember, these students were not just brand new Christian Scientists—they were new Christians, having never owned or even seen a Bible during the 70-year experiment of Communism. They loved what they were learning of Christian Science, of God, of man. The woman who was nominated said, “I’m sorry I can’t accept the nomination—I only know how to heal burns and pneumonia.” Needless to say, she was elected. And I was humbled.
When we understand how Jesus healed the sick, raised the dead, cast out demons, and cleansed the lepers (see Matthew 10:8 ), then we can accomplish the same thing right here, right now. Jesus healed with his understanding and faith in the relationship of God to man.
Yes—when it comes to healing, you can do it yourself!
