A healing of my own
It was pitch black as I began the walk back to my cabin from a camp meeting. In order not to wake any campers, I chose not to use my flashlight. Not more than ten seconds later, I walked straight into a planter, hitting my shin hard. The pain was sharp, and it felt like it was getting worse.
Though I grew up in Christian Science and had heard and read about other people’s healings, I didn’t feel I’d had as much success with my own healings. Then again, I hadn’t really had a lot of things in my life that needed healing. But as I saw my leg under the bathroom light when I was brushing my teeth a few minutes later, I noticed my shin was turning a shade darker than my normal skin color, and it looked like it would be an ugly bruise the next day. I realized that while this issue seemed small, no issue is too small to be healed.
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I realized that while this issue seemed small, no issue is too small to be healed.
I walked back to my cabin, and just before I closed my trunk to get into bed, I saw a copy of the Bible Lesson from the Christian Science Quarterly from the week before. The subject of the lesson was “Is the Universe, Including Man, Evolved by Atomic Force?”
As a counselor, one of my responsibilities was to help lead “quiet time” every day, during which we would discuss and explore Christian Science with the campers. This often meant reading and talking about that week’s Bible Lesson. Since my campers were eight-year-olds, often when we talked about Christian Science, we talked about it at a pretty basic level. So, my co-counselor and I had begun our explanation of this Lesson subject to our campers by simply asking the question, “Is the universe, including man, evolved by atomic force?”
The answer is no, based on the teachings of Christian Science, which reveal that the universe, including each of us, is totally spiritual. I like the way Mary Baker Eddy explains this in the last two lines of “the scientific statement of being” in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures: “Spirit is God, and man is His image and likeness. Therefore man is not material; he is spiritual” (p. 468).
Seeing the subject of the Lesson from the week before made me think of that conversation, and I understood the mistake I’d made when thinking about my collision with the planter. No matter how real it seemed, the bruise was not actually part of me because I am spiritual and whole, an expression of God, not a material body that can be damaged.
I could really see that I am spiritual and therefore governed by the laws of Spirit.
I flipped through that Lesson and found a verse from the Bible that says, “They that are after the flesh do mind the things of the flesh; but they that are after the Spirit the things of the Spirit” (Romans 8:5). I realized I needed to understand more deeply for myself the foundational ideas of Christian Science that I’d been teaching my campers. I could really see that I am spiritual and therefore governed by the laws of Spirit, God, and that these ideas are simply fact. God is the only power.
I fell asleep thinking about these ideas, and the following morning the bruise was completely gone. There was no pain or discoloration whatsoever.
I was grateful to have had a healing of my own and to learn that no matter what we’re dealing with, big or small, we can always discover more about the laws of God and experience their effects.