Some years ago, when the world was facing an epidemic of a particularly aggressive strain of flu, I found myself coming down with flu symptoms. To be honest, I didn’t think much about it. I just wanted to “sleep it off.” But a few days in, when the symptoms hadn’t improved in the slightest, it finally struck me that I should be addressing the problem as a Christian Scientist. 

I began slowly by going through the motions of what I thought a Christian Scientist should be doing—reading that week’s Bible Lesson from the Christian Science Quarterly, repeating the Lord’s Prayer, listening to hymns, and calling a Christian Science practitioner for Christian Science treatment. However, things seemed to go from unpleasant to worse. After several days I still wasn’t able to hold any food down and was drinking only a little bit of water. I lost over thirty pounds that week. And now family members were trying to hide the concern on their faces when they saw me. 

The practitioner spoke to me in terms that I’m not sure I understood well at the time, although I do now. He was trying to remind me that healing in Christian Science isn’t about thinking the right thoughts in an effort to heal a physical problem. Rather, healing comes about through acknowledging and wholeheartedly accepting that divine Truth is already true—namely, that my wholeness, health, and well-being are established and maintained by God, Spirit, not matter, and are therefore indestructible and intact.

The help from the practitioner snapped me out of feeling completely at the mercy of this disease, to the point that I no longer felt an overwhelming desire to sleep. I could sit up, I could read with purpose, and I could pray. And so I did. 

I had been raised in Christian Science and was grateful for past healings, but I wanted to know more. I wanted to understand how the words in the Christian Science textbook, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy, could be understood and accepted in a way that causes a change in our experience. I remember reading the entire chapter titled “Christian Science Practice” in one sitting, and drinking it in as I never had before. What I know is that the reading, studying, and praying I was doing was moving my thought.

As I was feeling grateful for the freedom from the overwhelming desire to sleep and for the uplift I was getting from the studying I was doing, I heard the sound of preparations for dinner downstairs. I was hungry, and for the first time in over a week I wanted to eat. I joined my family for the meal, much to their joy. At this point I felt completely well, though it took a few days to regain my normal color and weight.

Interestingly, both my mother and the practitioner pointed out to me a comment Mrs. Eddy made to Joseph Mann, one of her students. Mrs. Eddy had questioned him in detail about a dramatic healing he had experienced through Christian Science after he was accidentally shot in the heart (see We Knew Mary Baker Eddy, Expanded Edition, Vol. II, pp. 160–161). She said, according to his recollection, “You have had a wonderful experience; you were thrown violently out of the house and picked yourself up outside; go not back into the house.” I was glad to be reminded of this statement. I had experienced a sudden shift from a sense of life in matter to a new and higher view of life in Spirit. I would not go back to the mistaken concept of myself as material and at the mercy of a material body; I would stick to divine Truth. As Christ Jesus said, “Let him which is on the housetop not come down to take any thing out of his house” (Matthew 24:17).

This was a milestone healing for me in my progress as a Christian Scientist, and I am continually grateful for the new views of life in and of Spirit that the experience brought me.

Marc Schwartz
Andover, Massachusetts, US