When I was eleven years old...

Ida F. Miller

When I was eleven years old my mother became interested in Christian Science, and I entered a Christian Science Sunday School, attending regularly until I was twenty. I have always been grateful for the firm foundation in the letter of Christian Science that I got from the Sunday School teaching, but it was not until I left school that I really began to appreciate and understand a little of the spirit of this Science. Then I began to study to learn the rules and how to apply them.

Often in this Science healings come through our study to gain increased understanding rather than through an effort on our part to overcome a material condition. This was my experience many years ago when I was healed of numerous warts on my right hand that had embarrassed me through my high school and college days. It seemed that the more I tried to overcome them and know the unreality of them, the more irritated they became and the larger they grew. Finally, one evening, when I was reading Science and Health by Mrs. Eddy for increased understanding, the light dawned.

On page 418 she says: "Speak the truth to every form of error. Tumors, ulcers, tubercles, inflammation, pain, deformed joints, are waking dream-shadows, dark images of mortal thought, which flee before the light of Truth." "Why," I thought, "if they are just 'dream-shadows, dark images of mortal thought,' there is no substance to them, and of course, they disappear with 'the light of Truth.'"

Then I went further and knew that since I am actually the image and likeness of God, and my thinking reflects the Mind that is God, it was not natural for me to have any "dark images of mortal thought." I promptly resolved to watch my thinking, and I forgot about the warts. Several days later when I noticed my hand the warts had diminished to half their former size, and by the end of the week they had disappeared completely.

I should like to tell of another experience that occurred a number of years later. I was not satisfied with my position, and the salary was very limited, but I had taken no human steps to correct the situation. One day when I was studying the Lord's Prayer and its spiritual interpretation, given on pages 16 and 17 of Science and Health, I spent quite a few minutes contemplating these lines:

"Give us this day our daily bread;
Give us grace for to-day; feed
the famished affections."

I thought of the abundance of God's grace, and I saw that it could be manifested in the kind of position where I could best serve for as long as it was necessary for me to be in the business world. As I sat thinking about this, the telephone rang, and a friend told me of an employer who was an active Christian Scientist and needed someone to work in his business office. An interview was arranged, and I secured the position, at a small increase in salary over what I was then earning.

I remained in the employ of this company for fifteen years. The business grew rapidly, and my position grew with it. It was an interesting and satisfying experience, but best of all was the privilege of seeing the operation of Christian Science in the business world.

I have experienced a number of physical healings in Christian Science, and I am very grateful for a sense of well-being which I attribute to its preventive, as well as its curative, powers. I am very grateful for Christ Jesus, our Master, and for Mrs. Eddy's discovery of Christian Science and her devoted work in establishing The Mother Church and its branches. I am particularly grateful for the Lesson-Sermons, set out in the Quarterly, and for the other literature, all of which give us our daily bread.—(Mrs.) Ida F. Miller, Los Angeles, California.

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Signs of the Times

September 7, 1963

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