I was four or five years old when my grandmother and her friend took me to a beautiful park overlooking the river. As I was getting back into the car after our walk, I put my hand on the hinge of the open door for balance. My grandmother, unaware of my hand being there, closed the door on it. I calmly asked her to open the door so I could take my hand out. She quickly did so, and I got into the car. 

I remembered what I had been taught by my parents and Christian Science Sunday School teachers about God being our loving Parent. I had also learned that He is all-good and made all of His children perfect. Christ Jesus had shown this through his many healings recorded in the Bible. I knew that, like those he healed, I couldn’t actually be touched by anything that wasn’t good, because God gave me only good. I was peacefully quiet in the back seat, thinking these uplifting thoughts.

Grandma and her friend, a medical nurse, kept looking at each other as if they were quite concerned about my hand. But there was nothing to be concerned about. I knew that all was well, and that it was natural for me to accept only good as true. 

My grandmother, although not a Christian Scientist, deeply believed in God’s loving care and in the power of prayer to heal. She soon saw that there were no tears on my part, that I wasn’t in pain, and that my hand appeared normal, without any damage or wounds. So nothing needed to be made of the incident. I believe that after her initial concern, she too began to pray, and that this contributed to the calm atmosphere I felt in the car. What a happy memory! 

The experience was an early proof to me that, as Mary Baker Eddy writes in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, “the relations of God and man, divine Principle and idea, are indestructible in Science; and Science knows no lapse from nor return to harmony, but holds the divine order or spiritual law, in which God and all that He creates are perfect and eternal, to have remained unchanged in its eternal history” (pp. 470–471).

The confidence in God’s loving care that I gained from this experience enabled me throughout my childhood to experience quick, sometimes instantaneous, healings, including those of strep throat, poison ivy, burns, and an asthma attack. 

When I became a mom myself, it was a joy to know that my daughter’s real Parent is God and to see the healing effects of that understanding. We witnessed several beautiful instances of the protecting and healing power of God, including a rapid healing of chicken pox. 

How true these words from a beloved hymn are:

Susan Adams
Omaha, Nebraska, US