Testimony of Healing March 31, 2014 Issue

Prayer leads to a summer job

Richard A. Grotefendt

When I was studying forestry as an undergraduate in university, the idea came to me to seek summer employment in the tropics. Over a period of eight months, I wrote letters to individuals and organizations in Central and South America. I received offers for work, but all were without salary, and transportation costs were not paid. The summer was fast approaching, and final exams were coming up. One prominent botanist wrote me back that perhaps if I went on to graduate school in the future, I might be able to come to his research site in Costa Rica for a three-week class. But he said there was no paid work available currently.

I turned wholeheartedly to God and began praying about this. I had learned in the Christian Science Sunday School that God is all-knowing Mind, and that I reflect this Mind. So I worked at listening for what Mind would tell me. What came to me to do was to follow Jesus’ command, “Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof” (Matthew 6:34). Mary Baker Eddy echoes Jesus’ statement when she writes, “We cannot boast ourselves of to-morrow; sufficient unto each day is the duty thereof” (The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany, p. 161). Striving to be obedient to these commands each day, I refused to worry about the future. This was the hardest thing I’d ever done, and I had many struggles with myself to stay focused on the current day’s tasks.

From my study of Christian Science, I understood that God is eternal and knows nothing about time. In the Glossary of Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, Mrs. Eddy defines time in part as “mortal measurements” (p. 595). She also writes, “Never record ages. Chronological data are no part of the vast forever. Time-tables of birth and death are so many conspiracies against manhood and womanhood” (p. 246).