Joseph Mann had been accidentally shot. After doctors concluded that he couldn’t be saved, a Christian Scientist was allowed to step in and pray for him. Mann later stated: “Within about fifteen minutes after Christian Science had been admitted into our house I began suddenly to grow warm again under its treatment. . . . I became conscious, opened my eyes and knew I should not die, but would live.” And he did. 

At a hospital, the head nurse recorded Mary Belt’s death due to cancer. At that moment, as one of Belt’s brothers, a Christian Scientist who had been praying for her, leaned over her and called her by name, she opened her eyes and began to breathe naturally again. Belt later stated, “When I . . . awoke from that condition, I felt and knew that I was healed” (see A Century of Christian Science Healing, pp. 25–28 and 59–62).

Both Mann and Belt awoke and responded with a similar certainty of being well. How did they know that they were well? And when we face difficult circumstances, how can we be well and know it?