Article March 14, 2016 Issue

Patience and expectancy in healing

Troy Barker

The statement “Patience must ‘have her perfect work’ ” found in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy on page 454 is one I find myself turning to a lot in dealing with various challenges. While on the one hand it speaks to calm trust, the kind of calm trust spoken of in Proverbs 3:5 (“Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding”), on the other, the statement also speaks to working and praying with expectation.

If you are exercising patience, it often means that you expect something, that you are working toward a specific objective. Isn’t this also true when we are working toward the realization of healing? Sometimes the challenge with exercising patience is that it is easier to be patient when you are confident something is going to happen (a sunrise is a good example) or when you can see evidence of progress and you just need to wait a bit longer for the process to be completed (as you would with a sunset).

What happens if you do not see signs of progress, or the road ahead appears to be longer and more challenging than you thought—and you start to look impatiently for signs, for proof or something tangible that tells you that you are on the right track?

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