Testimony of Healing April 18, 2016 Issue

Hearing restored

Don Keeler

Two summers ago I spent five weeks in Florida helping to care for my mom. I love the ocean, so early in my stay I went several times to the nearby beach to swim. I returned from the beach one day and noticed that I could not hear well in one ear. Now and then I had experienced minor difficulties for only a few hours when water remained in an ear, but this time, the situation became progressively worse, even after I left Florida, until I was nearly deaf in that ear. I could not take part in normal conversation, enjoy music, or even wake to my alarm clock. It was also challenging to perform my duties as First Reader at our Christian Science Society.

I was concerned and began to pray about the concepts of hearing and listening. I remembered learning in Primary class instruction that Christian Science treatments need not be complicated but must be filled with conviction and love, and I took this to heart in my prayers.

The first helpful truth that came to me was from Psalms: “God hath spoken once; twice have I heard this; that power belongeth unto God” (62:11). From the Christian Science textbook, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy, I kept going back to the spiritual definition of ears. It reads in part: “Not organs of the so-called corporeal senses, but spiritual understanding” (p. 585). I also thought of another simple fact from the textbook: “The ear does not really hear” (p. 213). This helped me accept true hearing as a spiritual, not material, faculty—one that had to do with inspiration and did not rely on age or environment to function perfectly.