Part I: Ben's story

Sometimes on Sunday mornings while my dad practices the organ before church, my mom and I go to a special restaurant to have breakfast. We sit at a table where we can see the river. We talk about all sorts of things together: special bikes and baseball, or serious stuff like astronomy. Sometimes we even talk about things like God and healing.

One morning Mom told me about an interesting shape called an ellipse. She said that once, in France, a friend had taken her to see an outdoor arena that was the shape of an ellipse. It was built by the Romans around the time of Jesus. Mom stood near one end of the amphitheater, and her friend stood near the other. Even though they were far apart, they could hear each other clearly when they spoke in whispers. This seemed like magic, Mom said, but it really wasn't, because there was a law of physics behind it.

Then we talked about how Jesus' healings might have seemed like magic to people who didn't see the spiritual logic behind them. Some people think that the healing Christ Jesus did was only for his own time, but Mrs. Eddy discovered that what he did and taught was scientific—it could work not only for him and his disciples but always. That's why she called the truth she had discovered Christian Science—because it is provable.

I know from my own experience that healing does come through prayer. Once I woke up in the middle of the night feeling very sick. I was crying and having a hard time breathing. My dad came in and took me into my parents' bedroom. Mom was holding me propped up on pillows, and she started to sing hymns, while my dad went to call a Christian Science practitioner.

I was scared. "Why is this happening to me?" I kept thinking. But then a really good thought came to me. In my Sunday School class we studied Mrs. Eddy's definition of "angels." It begins, "God's thoughts passing to man; spiritual intuitions, pure and perfect...." ^{Science and Health, p. 581.} The Bible tells of angels meeting Jacob ^{See Gen. 32:1 .} and helping Peter when he was in prison. ^{See Acts 5:19; Acts 12:7.} So it seemed like an angel coming when I thought, "Oh God, please help me!"

Right then I stopped being afraid. By the time my dad came back to the room I was feeling better.

I was thinking about that as we were driving back to church. I said, "I think that when Christ Jesus taught how to heal through prayer, he really wanted us to keep on doing it."

Mom said something about Thomas Edison probably expecting people eventually to understand and use the light bulb, even though his invention must have seemed at first like magic. Mom said, "But it was provable—it was based on sound law. That's what I like about spiritual healing. It's scientific; it can be repeated because it's based on law—God's law."

Maybe you can see why I like our Sunday morning breakfasts.

Part II: my story

When my husband began playing the organ at our branch church, he had to be there by nine o'clock Sunday mornings to rehearse with the soloist. That was the end of our leisurely Sunday morning family breakfasts. I must admit I wasn't too happy about this. But, as in so many other instances, when I opened up my thought and turned to God, I saw the good that was present in the situation. I've really appreciated this special time that I can share with Ben, which is different from the time we spend together during our busy week.

My husband's work as a musician has touched other crucial parts of our "family time" as well—for instance every Friday, Saturday, and Sunday evening! But as I have seen that each of us can only really express God—and that good activity for one can only bless others—I've found that through prayer our sense of marriage and family has been strengthened.

When Ben got sick, we had just completed a cross-country move. We were in a strange house, in a strange town. When my husband brought him into our bedroom in the middle of the night, Ben was having a great deal of trouble breathing, and the situation seemed serious. My husband immediately went to telephone a practitioner, and her prayerful work was effective right away.

We take our legal and moral obligations as parents very seriously. We also love our son dearly and choose to rely on God and on spiritual healing through prayer because it has been so effective in our lives. Both of us and Ben have been healed many times through Christian Science, in some cases instantaneously, so we knew we could trust God in this case, too.

Parents who practice Christian Science try to live in accord with Christ Jesus' teachings and works on a daily basis. Christian Science practitioners are men and women—perhaps parents themselves—who may at one time have been in business or the professions but have subsequently chosen to practice Christian Science healing full time. Those who do this work, having met certain requirements of The Mother Church, are listed in The Christian Science Journal.

Treatment through prayer begins by relieving the patient's fear. Because God is good and has all power, material evidence has no credibility or power to contradict His love and care. God's perfect man (the identity of each of us) is safe in the care of our divine Father.

When a parent's fear is relieved, this actually facilitates a child's healing. As we are comforted with the truth of God's unfailing care, so we can comfort. That's what happened to me. When my husband went to call the practitioner, I held Ben in my arms and mentally reached out to our Father-Mother God. Immediately an answer came to mind in these wonderful words from the Bible: He "shall not die, but live, and declare the works of the Lord." ^{Ps. 118:17.} I knew in my heart that everything was all right. I saw, in a way I had never seen before, that God is always close to us, and because He is all-power and all-presence, sin, disease, and death are unreal. The fear and the illness were just eliminated in the light of this complete trust in God.

MARGARET I. HARDY