Article June 3, 2013 Issue

In the care of angels

Diana Jean Booth with contributions from James Edward Booth

The Bible is full of accounts of God’s ministering love, often represented as angels that bring healing, courage, and comfort. In Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, Mary Baker Eddy defines angels as “God’s thoughts passing to man; spiritual intuitions, pure and perfect; the inspiration of goodness, purity, and immortality, counteracting all evil, sensuality, and mortality” (p. 581). In the same book, she also writes: “My angels are exalted thoughts, appearing at the door of some sepulchre, in which human belief has buried its fondest earthly hopes. With white fingers they point upward to a new and glorified trust, to higher ideals of life and its joys” (p. 299).

For me, these statements so aptly express the spiritual qualities embodied by the Christian Science nurse. To someone who needs skilled physical care while relying on Christian Science for healing, as I did a few years ago, the Christian Science nurse comes as a ministering angel!

In the summer of 2009, a very large lump appeared on my right side and back, limiting my mobility and interfering with my normal daily routine. By July, I was almost completely immobilized. I was praying earnestly, with daily support from a Christian Science practitioner, but the symptoms were very aggressive. Then, one evening, I caught a glimpse of my unbroken relationship to God as His perfect child. At that point, I felt something shift in me, mentally and physically. I realized that the evidence of the material senses, no matter how alarming, could not change the reality of who I was as the reflection of God. What God didn’t create or express, I couldn’t reflect. As a lifelong Christian Scientist, I had known intellectually that this was true, but in that moment I really felt it. 

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