When my family and I were visiting my fiancée’s family in another state, a painful growth appeared on my leg that made it impossible to walk. I lay in bed for a couple of days, praying and reading the Bible and Christian Science literature.

On the third day, it was time to drive back home, and a comfortable place was made for me in the back of the car so I could lie down. I remember wincing at every bump in the road. Nevertheless, I was able to pray with some spiritual truths I had been taught in Christian Science Sunday School and by my parents, including this statement from Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures: “The Christlike understanding of scientific being and divine healing includes a perfect Principle and idea,—perfect God and perfect man,—as the basis of thought and demonstration” (Mary Baker Eddy, p. 259). 

The phrase “perfect God and perfect man” caught my attention. As I thought about perfect God, it came to me to imagine a gigantic white ball glowing with the light of divine Love. Then I pondered perfect man as God’s expression, made of and one with this same pure light. I thought I understood this concept of God and man. But where was I in all this? “Oh,” I thought, “I’m the observer looking at all this lovely white, glowing stuff.”