Freed from sudden illness in church

On a Sunday in March 2020, while preparing to conduct our church service as First Reader, I suddenly felt overcome with discomfort in the form of a headache and nausea. Desperately, I asked God to show me what He understood to be already true about me. I affirmed that I was a beloved, spiritual child of God and thus free from any discomfort or pain. When the service started, and I introduced the first hymn, I rejoiced in reading aloud this part of the second verse:

When we began the Responsive Reading, I felt a shift occur in my thinking as the congregation read from Isaiah that God is the only presence and power and that nothing could contend with the divine power. I realized that in my thought I might have been attributing power to reports of the spreading coronavirus. Such misplaced acceptance of a belief in a power opposed to good would interfere with my true understanding of God as All-in-all. 

I needed to know what God declared about His creation. I realized that God’s allness and goodness left no room for the spread of a virus to me, the congregation, or anyone else, anywhere. Acknowledging this, during the service I continually prayed, listened, and read. Upon singing the final hymn, one of my favorites (No. 342 from the Hymnal), I wanted to rejoice aloud that God had answered my call and deserved the utmost praise. I was completely free! 

In the Christian Science textbook, Mary Baker Eddy explains that because God created us in the likeness of Himself, divine Spirit, we are completely free from the discords of the material senses—what she termed “mortal mind” and its false suggestions of susceptibility to material conditions and limitations. She writes: “In proportion as matter loses to human sense all entity as man, in that proportion does man become its master. He enters into a diviner sense of the facts, and comprehends the theology of Jesus as demonstrated in healing the sick, raising the dead, and walking over the wave” (Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 369 ).

This healing fueled my commitment as a Christian healer to see the world as God, Spirit, created it. God declared His work to be good, and that declaration is manifested in each deliverance from illness that is arrived at on this spiritual basis. Spiritual healing is the way.

Kacy Valentine
Ellicott City, Maryland, US