Testimony of Healing May 27, 2013 ISSUE

No more heart trouble

Bonita K. Rea

For several years, off and on I experienced symptoms, sometimes very aggressive ones, of high blood pressure and heart trouble. I would call on a dedicated Christian Science practitioner and receive immediate prayerful help, but eventually the fear would return and the symptoms with it.

One early morning as I prayed, I listened intently, humbly, for what God had to tell me. At the moment I was holding Mary Baker Eddy’s Prose Works in my hands. I opened the book at random and saw Jesus’ words quoted from the Bible: “The kingdom of God is within you” (Luke 17:21 ). I drank in the message. Eleven times I opened the book—to a different page each time—and eleven times I saw “The kingdom of God is within you” or variations of that message. Again and again, God was saying: “Bonnie, I’m telling you, this is all you need to know. So, know it—be it.” 

Two of the passages from Mrs. Eddy’s writings were very powerful. One is from Pulpit and Press: “ ‘The kingdom of God is within you.’ Know, then, that you possess sovereign power to think and act rightly, and that nothing can dispossess you of this heritage and trespass on Love” (p. 3 ). The other is from The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany: “ ‘Behold, the kingdom of God is within you’—within man’s spiritual understanding of all the divine modes, means, forms, expression, and manifestation of goodness and happiness” (p. 267 ).

It became clear that all the good I was seeking I already included as the reflection of God, the all-good. I dwell in the consciousness of God, Life, Love, and Soul. That good could not be found “out there” somewhere in person, place, or circumstance. God and I were one inseparable being.

With that, the healing was complete. The symptoms never returned. 

Years later, it struck me one morning that I am the “place” of God-reflected consciousness. With that in mind, I was inspired to write the following poem: 

The kingdom of heaven is within me.

I am the place of uncontested purity 
   and health,
uninvadable holiness and beauty,
unassailable peace and glory
unfathomable understanding
incomparable wisdom and strength
indescribably radiant being

I am the place where righteousness 
   reigns
 —where God dwells eternally.

I am the place where mesmerism 
   is dispelled,
where the serpent is speechless,
where mortal mind is unheard of,
where matter is nonexistent,
where evil is extinct,
where death is unknown.
I am the place—“an individual 
   kingdom” *
—where God reigns, forever.

Bonita K. Rea
Roswell, Georgia, US

*Mary Baker Eddy, Pulpit and Press, p. 4

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Testimony of Healing
A Sunday School lesson and healing
May 27, 2013
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