Serving church—the open door to healing
To serve in church is to put yourself in that sanctuary of strength where Love has opened the door, and spiritual progress is assured.
I was dealing with yet another head cold. These colds had been plaguing me for years and sometimes included symptoms of strep throat. Prayer, which had brought healing in so many other situations, hadn’t made these go away, and at one point, I took cold medicine just so I could answer the phone in my job as a secretary.
Now I was standing alone in our branch Church of Christ, Scientist, looking out at our most recent project—a new Sunday School building—and thinking about the fact that in a few weeks I was to begin a term as First Reader, conducting Sunday services and Wednesday testimony meetings. I thought, “I can’t fulfill that post as Reader and have these colds at the same time. They have to stop.” And that was it. I haven’t experienced those symptoms in the years since.
What brought about this healing? I believe that it was a deep desire to serve my church in new ways that opened the door to healing. I had quit my secretarial job with the intent of broadening my participation in church beyond work that I already loved. My first day at home after leaving my job, I wrote my first article, which was soon published in The Christian Science Journal. I accepted the position of First Reader, and a few months later, I was appointed to serve as Christian Science Committee on Publication for my state. The desire to serve in whatever way God wanted me to finally overrode the false belief that I was a helpless victim of recurring illness.
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