One morning years ago, one of my feet was throbbing in pain and so swollen that it wouldn’t fit into a shoe. To quell the fear that I’d not be able to walk almost a mile to meet my daughter, as I did daily, and then walk her home from school, I began reading the weekly Christian Science Bible Lesson. It’s found in the Christian Science Quarterly and comprises passages from the Bible and from Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy. One passage in particular was illuminated to me: “Become conscious for a single moment that Life and intelligence are purely spiritual,—neither in nor of matter,—and the body will then utter no complaints” (Science and Health, p. 14). 

I thought, “ Only a moment—I can do that!” I continued reading, totally absorbed in the spiritual truth of the Lesson. After I finished reading, without thinking I put my foot into my shoe normally—no more throbbing, no more swelling! I walked comfortably to meet my daughter, rejoicing all the way in the quickness and power of God’s Word. And that was the end of the problem. 

I’ve had many proofs in my life of the immediate availability of God, divine Love, to restore harmony, but this experience gave me confidence in this statement from Science and Health: “One moment of divine consciousness, or the spiritual understanding of Life and Love, is a foretaste of eternity” (p. 598).