Most companies today offer their employees a benefits package in addition to a salary, often using it as an incentive to attract, retain, and reward top employees. After college, I worked in employee relations for a major company, and I conducted, compiled, and analyzed an industry-wide employee benefits survey. In so doing, I realized that although the benefits were offered, in order to be benefited by them an employee needed to sign up for them and then claim them. 

It wasn’t long after I left the corporate world that this lesson of needing to claim or accept one’s benefits came back to help me. In the interim, I’d become a serious student of Christian Science. In this study, I couldn’t help but recognize that Christian Science is indeed Christ’s Christianity—that it is based on divine Principle, God, and demonstrated according to His laws of Life, Truth, and Love. Christ Jesus’ mission was to reveal this Science by healing sickness as well as sin, proving its Principle to be Love, God—therefore all good—and God’s truth certain. And Jesus promised his followers, including us today, “If ye continue in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed; and ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free” (John 8:31, 32).

I learned that I needed to take this promise to heart when I was suddenly stricken with severe sickness. At first it was scary, because it seemed I was too sick to think or pray. But then, refusing to accept that, I opened my bedside Bible, and what did my eyes fall upon? “Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits” (Psalms 103:2). That word benefits caught my attention. The psalm goes on to list God’s “benefits package.” Six benefits are specifically mentioned, and the first two are “forgiveth all thine iniquities” and “healeth all thy diseases.” This is when I remembered the lesson about benefits I’d learned in my job—that you need to claim or accept them.