I have seen, throughout the many challenges that I have experienced, that Christian Science is always able to come to our aid if we trust it completely.

In November 2010, when I had to step in for the First Reader of our branch church, who was going on a trip, I was wrestling with a severe urinary problem.

In fact, on the Tuesday following the departure of our First Reader, I began to feel discomfort in the lower abdomen, and when I had to urinate, I found it extremely difficult to do so. It was very painful. As a student of Christian Science, I told myself that I had to close the door to this pain, because I knew that it was nothing but a mistake about my true self, knocking at the door of my consciousness, and that I must reject it immediately. Then I thought of a passage that I love in Science and Health: “When the illusion of sickness or sin tempts you, cling steadfastly to God and His idea. Allow nothing but His likeness to abide in your thought. Let neither fear nor doubt overshadow your clear sense and calm trust, that the recognition of life harmonious—as Life eternally is—can destroy any painful sense of, or belief in, that which Life is not” (p. 495).

I really understood that I was the spiritual image and likeness of God and that nothing bad could develop and cause disease. There was simply no room in me where any sort of disease could develop. But although I prayed in this way, the problem seemed to worsen, and by Wednesday, when I was supposed to conduct the evening testimony meeting in our church, I did not think I would be able to do it because the pain was severe and I could barely stand.

It was at this point that the clerk of our church called me to remind me that I had to conduct the service. I told him, without mentioning anything about the problem, that I was aware of my assignment and that I would be there. Then I prepared the readings for the testimony meeting, and I arrived at church knowing that it was the Christ alone who did the work. 

A friend who is a Christian Science practitioner was in church, and I asked him to help me in prayer because I felt very ill. He spoke to me the same words that I had been thinking: I needed to know that I had no responsibility and that it was the Christ alone who was doing God’s work. And all went well during the service. But after I got home, the problem grew even worse.

As I prayed, I knew that every function belongs to Mind and obeys Mind. And I realized that nothing could disturb or disrupt the harmonious functioning of my being, which was completely spiritual and directly dependent on God, Spirit, my only substance.

I remained steadfast in study and prayer. The sentence following the statement previously quoted from Science and Health came to my thought: “Let Christian Science, instead of corporeal sense, support your understanding of being, and this understanding will supplant error with Truth, replace mortality with immortality, and silence discord with harmony.”

I also called my Christian Science teacher to ask her to help me through prayer, which she agreed to do, telling me that I should understand clearly that I was the expression of Soul, God. I quickly realized that I was pure and that I owned only what God owns. Whatever was not in God or of God could never affect me, not even for a moment. I also thought of the following passage: “Verily, verily, I say unto you, The Son can do nothing of himself, but what he seeth the Father do: for what things soever he doeth, these also doeth the Son likewise” (John 5:19). So it was very clear that just as the Father could not know disease, then neither could I. God, infinite good, was All, and there was nothing other than God. There was simply no disease.

I did not go to the hospital to get a diagnosis of the nature of this evil because I knew that disease has neither history nor reality and that whatever the symptoms, it was only a deception about God and the real man, made in God’s image. All my functions returned to normal after about two weeks, and since then, the healing has been permanent.

I am very grateful to Mary Baker Eddy for giving us Science and Health, a book I could never do without, and also very grateful for being a Sunday School teacher at my church, because during this whole challenge, the children I teach supported me by singing hymns and reading the Bible Lesson to me.

Nicolas Mupepe Lata
Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo