There have been many proofs of God's care and...

SUZANNE B. POPPEN

There have been many proofs of God's care and guidance, but three years ago, when pain and lumps developed in both legs, I was challenged to trust God's healing power as never before. For several months I had help from two Christian Science practitioners at different times, and prayed on my own at other times.

I knew that in reality I am God's permanently unblemished spiritual idea. Also helpful was the recognition that my body is not material but a mental concept embraced in consciousness. Hence I was actually dealing with thought rather than a material condition. On page 400 of Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures Mary Baker Eddy refers to the body as "conscious thought." I could see clearly that my need was to rule suggestions of disease and pain out of consciousness whenever they attempted to gain attention. Also inspiring was this statement revealing the ultimate fact of consciousness (ibid., p. 536), "The divine understanding reigns, is all, and there is no other consciousness."

At one point, when I woke in the middle of the night in pain, it occurred to me to deny that God's man could die or be killed. I prayed diligently over this truth about the deathlessness of my being as the child of God. The pain left temporarily, and I went back to sleep.

The pain left permanently when I accepted the practitioner's statement that her prayerful work was complete, and held also to the simple confidence that I would be able to go on a hike which meant a great deal to me. I reasoned that God never withholds good from His creation, and that His omnipotence ruled the situation. And so it was; the beginning of the hike was the end of the pain.

The lumps persisted until a day when it became clear that they are generally associated with a particular malignant disease. Right then I vehemently insisted that there was no disease or malignancy going on in my being, in the pure consciousness of spiritual existence. The Apostle Paul said of God (Acts 17:28), "In him we live, and move, and have our being." Later that day I had occasion to notice that all the lumps were gone.

As wonderful as this healing was, for some time I continued to challenge the lie of malignant disease, reasoning that it has no reality, no space to occupy, since God, good, fills all space. God is the sustaining Life of man. Gradually all fear and unpleasant memory of this problem left me completely until now it seems like the dream that it really was.

My family has been greatly blessed by Christian Science, which indeed is the pearl of great price and worthy of all we have to do to demonstrate it.

SUZANNE B. POPPEN
Chicago, Illinois

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