Last summer, as I was preparing to fly home from the annual meeting of my Christian Science students’ association, the skin on my hip and side became inflamed. I prayed with ideas shared in the address given at that meeting. One idea was that matter and its conditions are temporal illusions of mortal mind, which is a false sense that denies the allness and purely good government of the one Mind, God. 

According to Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy, correcting ungodlike thoughts results in healing. I prayed to see more clearly that irritation and pain couldn’t be true about me because our Father-Mother God is purely good and makes each of us exactly like Her. After some days of prayer, I contacted a Christian Science practitioner, who shared two particularly helpful thoughts: 1) The only activity ever taking place is the activity of good, and 2) I am not an accumulation of material events and human opinions but an ever-new, spiritual expression of my perfect divine source, God, Spirit. 

As I prayed with these and other ideas the following week, I saw how these same truths also applied to a family member who, some years before, had experienced and described to me a similar condition. Under God’s government, this condition could have been no more true for this family member than it was for me, and I saw those descriptions as never truly having had any validity for my relative.