Prayer for healing in Morocco

Some years ago my husband and I were traveling in Africa as a freelance writing and photography team. At one point we were accompanying a group of university professors and personnel from the United States Agency for International Development on a visit to semi-pastoralist (livestock-based and itinerant) communities in the high desert grasslands of northern Morocco. 

I had spent significant time in prayer preparing for this trip. And two ideas that I took to heart during that time were these: First, there is no “dark continent.” For many decades “colonialists” referred to Africa as the “dark continent.” I knew this could not be true because where God’s children dwell, there is only light, and Africans, like all people, are in truth God’s children.

Second, in thinking about the areas where we would be traveling, I specifically worked with the thought that God’s man is neither a “host” nor a “parasite.” He is completely spiritual, so he can’t be a host for insect-borne disease. And he isn’t a parasite—i.e., a victim needing constant aid, a beggar or a thief—in relation to his fellow man.

On the second or third day in this part of Morocco, my husband fell ill with a high fever. He was also very listless. We are both Christian Scientists and had experienced healings using this spiritual method of treating disease, so it was natural to turn to God in this case as well. 

Because this work in Africa had been pretty much my idea, I had moments of fear where I imagined what I would say to my husband’s family if he died in that faraway land. Whenever this fear gripped me, I had to turn my thought wholly to God to regain peace and calm. 

I prayed to see that because my husband was the idea of infinite Mind, it wasn’t possible for him (or anyone) to be outside of God’s universe. And I prayed with the ideas about darkness/light and parasite/host I previously mentioned. But the high fever continued for the next couple of days.

Finally, we headed back to Rabat, Morocco’s capital. I was glad of this because we would then no longer need to keep up with the group during the day, and I could concentrate on meeting my husband’s needs and expecting a complete return to health. 

The next day, I asked my husband to share with me what he was thinking about besides the illness. He said he found the country oppressive—that he didn’t like how women, including me, were treated like second-class citizens and property. This answer helped me see that illness is the body’s response to turmoil and oppression in thought. 

I realized that the illness had set in right after one uncomfortable scene at a restaurant during our tour.

At the time, the restaurant was full of local men only, and they had been eating, lounging, smoking, and visiting. I was the only female in the tour group, and when I sat down to the meal arranged for the tour group, the local men got up and left. According to the Western-educated Moroccans in our group, their strict Islamic law would not allow these men to eat in the same room as a woman. 

Once we embraced everyone in our prayers, the illness disappeared very quickly.

The other thing my husband mentioned was that during the whole time we’d been in Morocco, we were under a constant barrage from people asking us for money whenever we went out. In addition, I had been told that most citizens had been led to believe that Western women had loose morals and were looking for sex. It wasn’t surprising that I was harassed by young men who would pester me to “Come home and meet my mother.” 

Knowing that it was just ignorance and misperceptions, I had found a way to see these young men as innocent, and I didn’t let the pestering bother me too much. But once I glimpsed what was really troubling my husband, I realized that we needed to broaden our prayers. We had to pray not only to understand that my husband couldn’t be oppressed by any material laws that could have led to illness, but also to understand no one in Morocco could be oppressed by laws of religion or culture.

God didn’t know the difference between a man or woman from the United States or a man or woman from Morocco. In God’s eyes, we are all His beloved children—whole, complete, and “very good,” as the Bible tells us in Genesis 1:31 . 

Once we embraced everyone in our prayers, the illness disappeared very quickly. My husband and I traveled for another three months, crossing many borders, including some guarded by men with AK-47s. We traveled throughout malaria-prone areas and on rivers in boats that looked sure to sink. Often, we had no idea where we would be sleeping or what we would be eating at the end of the day. Yet not once did we lack food or shelter, nor did we fall ill for any length of time. The couple of times one of us experienced symptoms resulting from food or water contamination or insect-borne disease, prayer brought healing quickly. 

In her seminal work, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, Mary Baker Eddy reminds us of the power—individual and collective—of turning to the one God. She says: “One infinite God, good, unifies men and nations; constitutes the brotherhood of man; ends wars; fulfils the Scripture, ‘Love thy neighbor as thyself;’ annihilates pagan and Christian idolatry,—whatever is wrong in social, civil, criminal, political, and religious codes; equalizes the sexes; annuls the curse on man, and leaves nothing that can sin, suffer, be punished or destroyed” (p. 340 ). 

I just love the way this passage helps us understand how knowing one, infinite God, good, can eliminate from our thinking—and thus our experience—everything from individual suffering to religious oppression and war.