I learned to love the Bible, especially the stories about Jesus, as a young child growing up in a Christian family. When I was a teen, my study helped me relate many of the Bible figures to specific recorded events and to appreciate its beautiful, poetic language. However, it was after I became a student of Christian Science while at university that I learned to not only love the Bible but honor it. These days, I am finding that the Bible is the powerful, living Word of God, which, revealed in the light of spiritual understanding, heals.

Gaining the spiritual import of a Bible passage is prayer that can bring about healing. Take, for instance, part of a verse from the book of Hebrews: “The word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword” (4:12). Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy gives the spiritual meaning of the word sword as used in Scripture, which reads, in part, “The idea of Truth” (p. 595). Elsewhere Science and Health says: “Truth should, and does, drive error out of all selfhood. Truth is a two-edged sword, guarding and guiding” (p. 538). 

Years ago, prayer led me to see this spiritual sense of the Hebrews passage when a long-standing problem with my mouth that often made eating difficult flared up once again. That insight inspired me to better understand, in some small way, the nature of God as Truth, knowing and preserving only what is true and good. Within moments of this realization, I felt a sharp twinge, and a hard object was dislodged from my mouth. There was a draining, and I was healed. The problem has never recurred.