Hearing restored

With great joy and gratitude, I’d like to share an experience which showed me that there is only one Mind, God, and that man (our true, spiritual identity) is one with this Mind.

I had been serving as Second Reader in our branch church for six months when I suddenly realized during one service that I couldn’t hear the First Reader. In spite of fear welling up, I insisted that God alone is in control and that the service could not be interrupted.

After the service, I asked a Christian Science practitioner for prayer to acknowledge with me that God is All-in-all. This means God’s creation is one with Him—now and forever. I prayed to overcome fear that I could ever become separated from God.

Mary Baker Eddy writes: “Science saith to fear, ‘. . . You do not exist, and have no right to exist, for “perfect Love casteth out fear” ’ ” (Retrospection and Introspection, p. 61).

It was clear to me that it wasn’t a physical healing that was needed but a deeper understanding of the unshaken fact that the real man is spiritual and therefore forever complete and perfect.

Mrs. Eddy answers the question “What is man?” in part this way: “Man is not matter; he is not made up of brain, blood, bones, and other material elements” (Science and Health with Key
to the Scriptures, p. 475).  

I reasoned that my true being is spiritual, the reflection of God, and obedient to the Mind that created me. Hearing, as well as seeing, is a spiritual faculty and cannot be lost, because it is rooted and grounded in divine Mind, Spirit. These faculties are fulfilling their purpose by producing harmonious results. True, spiritual hearing and seeing are not caused by physical organs; they are the outcome of the all-knowing, all-acting God, perfect Love. 

Because God, Truth, alone communicates to His ideas, we need to listen for, accept, and follow these thoughts. And we need to detect and reject thoughts or suggestions called material laws, such as age or accident, and insist on the fact that, by reflection, all abilities and faculties are entirely spiritual, ever present, and perfect.

Christ Jesus said, “I can of mine own self do nothing” (John 5:30). I acknowledged that I cannot do anything on my own—without God—but with Him I am able to fulfill all my duties. Knowing that I, as well as everyone else, am a pure idea or expression of God gave me strength, peace, and joy during church services.

It never occurred to me to give up the office of Second Reader or to use hearing aids. While there is nothing wrong with having temporary assistance, I knew it wouldn’t solve the problem. I insisted on my God-given right to understand God as the only cause and all His children and the universe as His effect. 

The desire to be obedient to—to listen only to—Love’s, God’s, voice led me to handle daily aggressive suggestions about issues in my own life as well as larger world problems such as environmental disasters, war, poverty, hate, and corruption, and to see the nothingness of these errors because of the allness of Love. It became important to me to love God’s nature as expressed in everything—“from a blade of grass to a star” (Science and Health, p. 70) —and to love myself as God loves and knows me. The joy that I am only “subject to the divine ‘powers that be’ ” (Science and Health, p. 249) helped me again and again to handle fear, doubts, and discouragement when the difficulties in not hearing became overwhelming.

Last summer my sister and I were invited to visit our neighbor, who has two little children. Honestly, I didn’t feel like accepting this invitation. The fear of not being able to hear and communicate normally was very aggressive. But again I insisted that God, Mind, is the only cause and all His children are the effect. Mind, Life, Love, are reflected, manifested, by all of us, God’s ideas. Each is invaluable, loving, precious, necessary to express His glory. Each is a blessing to another and is blessed by another. Mind is the source of all seeing, hearing, and moving; and Spirit, Soul, is ever present and beautifies everything. These thoughts finally freed me from fear, and that was the end of the difficulty; the healing was complete.

I am very grateful and filled with joy for this proof of being a beloved idea of God with indestructible faculties. How wonderful to hear again at Sunday services and Wednesday testimony meetings and to be able to communicate normally with everyone!

I am deeply grateful to the practitioner for her patient love and unshakable conviction that Truth is 100 percent reliable and always the victor. Error—an apparent lack or loss of good—is proved as nothing, never having one iota of power to outlaw God’s law of perfection. I am also very grateful to my dear sister for her patience, love, and spiritual support. 

I would like to close with a quotation from the Christian Science textbook: “The facts of divine Science should be admitted,—although the evidence as to these facts is not supported by evil, by matter, or by material sense,—because the evidence that God and man coexist is fully sustained by spiritual sense” (Science and Health, p. 471).

Brigitte Fessel-Voigt
Frankfurt, Germany