Article June 16, 2014 Issue

Christian Science practitioner for a day

Tabitha Kemnitz

Last summer I took a service trip to Peru with my National Leadership Council class, a group of young Christian Scientists learning about servant leadership together. We were there to help plaster and paint a school in a village near the city of Cusco, and we would also teach English, art, sports, dance, and music to the students for several days. In order to spiritually support the trip, a Christian Science practitioner prayed from her home in the US—and each of us took turns being practitioners for a day as well. Everyone was assigned a buddy so we could pray together for the class throughout the day.

The night before it was going to be my turn to be the practitioner, I prepared readings from the Bible and Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, by Mary Baker Eddy, for the testimony meeting we would be having the next day. I chose passages that talk about how God loves His children, and how He is in constant communication with us and never leaves us alone. I fell asleep with those ideas fresh in my mind, knowing that the next day I could hold strongly to them and use them to pray for the class.

The next morning I woke up quite early, for what seemed to be no reason. Moments later my roommate rushed to the bathroom, feeling ill. After I reassured her that everything was OK, we both went back to sleep. Half an hour later I woke up again, moments before my roommate ran once more to the bathroom. That time one of our class leaders came in and we prayed together with the answer to the question in Science and Health, “What is man?” (p. 475). We knew that man (a term Mrs. Eddy uses to refer to all men and women) is nothing that can be tampered with; man is the image and likeness of God. We affirmed together that my roommate reflected God perfectly and completely, and once she was feeling better we went back to sleep.