Turning Points in Spiritual Growth April 25, 2016 Issue

Brought back to the truth

Dilys Bell

I had been happily teaching in a primary school for several years when the school went through a period of great change, which created major challenges for the staff. It was a time of great stress. In the face of what seemed to be wrongdoing by others, it felt right to resign, though I stayed until the end of the school year.

My study of Christian Science had been somewhat perfunctory at this point because of the busyness of life, but this crisis brought me right back to the truth, as I knew Christian Science to be. There were other challenges going on in my life, and I found it difficult to function. I felt I had reached a very low point. However, I took comfort in what Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, writes in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures: “Trials are proofs of God’s care. Spiritual development germinates not from seed sown in the soil of material hopes, but when these decay, Love propagates anew the higher joys of Spirit, which have no taint of earth” (p. 66).

I felt encouraged by this promise, and I returned to diligently studying the weekly Bible Lesson from the Christian Science Quarterly in an endeavor to learn more about my relationship to God, the source of all good. I took out subscriptions to the Sentinel and The Christian Science Journal. I loved the uplifting articles and testimonies in these periodicals, and felt that I, too, could be healed and find freedom from despairing thoughts. I was reminded of all the lovely proofs of God’s care I had seen and the healings I had experienced in the past.