One spring after college, I worked for a local museum, running a youth camp as its only program leader. On the morning of my first day on the job, I awoke very early in great discomfort. 

In the days prior to this, I had experienced some troubling digestive issues but had been able to push past the discomfort and carry on with whatever I was doing. This morning, however, I found moving extremely difficult, and going to work a few hours later seemed impossible. I immediately reached for the Holy Bible along with Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy, which together are the Christian Science pastor. I knew that above all, this was an opportunity to know God better. I began reading that week’s Bible Lesson from the Christian Science Quarterly (composed of citations from the Bible and Science and Health), and then other passages from Science and Health. After reading, I felt a deeper peace and rested quietly before getting ready for work.

During breakfast, I was reading an article in the Sentinel when a quote from Science and Health caught my attention: “When the mechanism of the human mind gives place to the divine Mind, selfishness and sin, disease and death, will lose their foothold” (p. 176). I knew that “the mechanism of the human mind” included a stream of material thoughts that distracted me from God’s—divine Spirit’s—perfect, spiritual reality. As taught in Christian Science, I could identify these thoughts as not my own, but rather as material suggestions, which were nothing because they did not come from God, good. Mrs. Eddy writes, “Evil is nothing, no thing, mind, nor power” (Science and Health, p. 330). I prayed to be filled with thoughts from God, the only Mind.