A gift for my community
Originally appeared online in the teen series My Church - December 20, 2022
I’m a Christian Scientist, but there aren’t many branch Churches of Christ, Scientist, near where my family lives. So when I was thinking about a service project to help my community, the mobile Reading Room that my dad built came to mind.
A Christian Science Reading Room is a place open to the public that contains literature to help people learn more about or study Christian Science. I thought it would be wonderful to provide my community members access to the Bible, to Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy, and to other resources that are available through the church’s publishing arm. These books and magazines have helped me in so many ways that I wanted everyone to be able to benefit from them and be healed by the ideas they contain, the way I have. Various churches in the area donated Christian Science literature, Bibles, and other resources for us to give away; we agreed not to sell anything.
My dad and brother felt the same way I did about bringing Christian Science to our neighbors, so they offered to go with me. We’ve found it helpful to pray before everything we do, so praying before we took the Reading Room out felt natural. I liked the idea that we were “the light of the world” as Jesus said (Matthew 5:14) and that we were being led by God.
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