Testimony of Healing May 2, 2016 Issue

No more restricted jaw movement

Elisabeth Schwartz

For several days, a few years ago, I had been unable to open my jaw enough to chew solid food. And I was healed during a Wednesday evening testimony meeting at a branch Church of Christ, Scientist.

Before the service, I had been thinking about Jesus’ parable about the seed that fell on the good ground, and the seed that fell among thorns and was choked (see Luke 8:4–15). A number of unresolved challenges had been weighing on my mind, and the combined demands of work and family felt like too much to bear. Sitting in church now, however, I felt a deep calm. God was speaking to me in a way that I could hear that night, and I wanted that “good seed” to grow within me. I knew that I couldn’t let the cares of daily living or a preoccupation with a material perspective “choke” out the impact of God’s Word in my life.

Then the story of Elijah the prophet and the widow of Zarephath in First Kings 17:8–16 came to thought. I remembered that Elijah asked her for some water, and as she went to get it, he also asked her to get him a bite to eat. Burdened by her sense of extremely limited resources, she told the prophet that she was gathering sticks to make the last meal that she and her son would ever eat.

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