The less we know or think about hygiene, the less we are predisposed to sickness.
Science and Health 389:5-7

It was dinnertime and I was slicing a large cut of meat for a stir-fry dish. The knife was quite dull, making the job more difficult than it needed to be. Right then my husband passed through the kitchen and I asked if he would sharpen a few of my most-used knives. He did an excellent job. When I resumed cutting the beef, I found that the knife slipped through it like it was butter – and then through my finger. Looking down I realized that I had sliced off the top of my index finger, including part of the nail. It began to bleed profusely, so I grabbed a paper towel and wrapped it tightly.

While fixing dinner, I was listening to a favorite CD of Christmas choral music. At this critical moment, the music was particularly lush with the glorious transcendent quality that characterizes so much of this particular musical genre. I sat down at the kitchen table, closed my eyes, and found my thought completely caught up in the simple idea of the glory of God. The clear realization of His powerful ever-presence was mirrored in the pure and soaring musical line right then. For just a minute or two, my whole being felt filled with God’s allness.

Keeping the finger bandaged over the next few days seemed wise, and I also deferred to another pianist at church to play for our Wednesday evening service that week. But I continued to pray to know that the palpable sense of God’s glory and power I had felt earlier, even for just a brief moment, governed my whole being, precluding any accident that could suggest that God wasn’t in complete and continuous control. Within just a matter of days (what seemed a remarkable short span of time) the end of my finger rounded out perfectly and the nail grew back normally. Both index fingers, extended out side-by-side, looked exactly the same. Today it is impossible to tell which finger had been cut.

I’m so grateful for those crystalline moments when we can so clearly sense God’s all-encompassing love and presence – right where we are!

I knew from my study of Christian Science, that fear was the first thing to be handled in my prayers and I studied references in the Holy Bible and Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, by Mary Baker Eddy, to arrest my fears. The Bible says:”..perfect love casteth out fear” ( I John 4:18). I also called on a Christian Science Practitioner, listed in the Christian Science Journal, for treatment through prayer.

I knew that “Truth (another name for God) removes properly whatever is offensive” (Science and Health p. 463) I pondered references from Eddy’s writings concering spiritual antidotes and alteratives, including where she writes: “Truth is an alterative in the entire system and can make it every whit whole”(Science and Health p. 371). As the fear was dispelled from my thought, foreign substances were expelled from my body, and the lesions closed and were completely healed. Soon all inflammation and unsightly discoloration was gone too.

I am very grateful for God’s great love and care for all His/Her children, and the healing power of the Christ,Truth, proved to me in this healing, and available to everyone in need. I am also grateful for the loving, prayerful support of the Christian Science practitioner, and my wife, who is also a student of Christian Science.

Art Morath

Three years ago our family moved from Texas to southeast Pennsylvania because of a change in employment. As the house in Texas had not sold, we had to rent at the new location. After many months we found the small rental with its restrictions to really making it our own becoming a challenge. As both my wife and I had been raised in Christian Science, we naturally turned to this practical solution for spiritual enlightenment and to come to peace with our housing situation. We enjoyed sharing the ideas that came to us through our study, particularly reading articles on related topics found on JSH-Online. We also engaged a Christian Science practitioner to help us see this situation more clearly. We came to see that home is really our oneness with God and therefore available to express its fullness wherever we are at the moment. We saw that there is no such thing as a mortgage or individual ownership. God owns everything and man expresses God in his reflection of the qualities of home. Our sense of home was expanding and becoming spiritually based.

One evening while walking through the small town where we lived, a fellow we knew asked us if we were still looking for a house to purchase and suggested we take a look at a particular house he knew of. One thing led to another and we moved forward to buy the house. At one point in the loan approval process the practitioner shared the idea with us that “we are already approved by divine Love.” This was such a powerful thought and broke the logjam which led to a smooth loan approval and closing.

In Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy, she writes, “Soul has infinite resources with which to bless mankind…” and this housing unfoldment made this truth beautifully evident. In addition to being the perfect house for us in a price range we could afford, the following are just three of the aspects that beautifully punctuated the completeness of the demonstration of divine Love’s – God’s – guidance and provision for us. About eight months before our current home came to our attention, the lease in Texas was expiring and we were simply not in a position to afford two mortgages. As we addressed this issue through prayer, we realized home is a complete idea for us and the folks renting our house. We found ourselves really expressing love to these renters. In short order the renters asked us to extend their contract, and because they knew we wanted to sell the house, they offered to give us an additional $500 extra per month. This amount proved critical in our being able to qualify for the loan on our purchase in Pennsylvania. Second, in Christian Science we learn that whatever blesses one blesses all. My wife and I began to see and be grateful for all the folks who were benefitting from this purchase in PA. The fellow who owned the house wanted to move to downtown Philadelphia to be closer to his aging parents. The owner of the place he bought in Philly was then able to retire to Florida. Additionally, people along the way at the loan office, bank and title company were all being blessed.

Finally, one small anecdote was such an exclamation point to this demonstration. For years our family has been associated with summer camps for Christian Scientists near Buena Vista, Colorado. In our travels around these camps we often take Highway 24 from Buena Vista up to Leadville. One of the road signs on the highway that we enjoy seeing each time has an arrow pointing to the other side of the Arkansas River with the words: “Old Stage Coach Road to Leadville”. Whenever we saw this crude road sign it brought images of Conestoga wagons and hardy pioneers. It always resulted in interesting conversations and appreciation of time gone by. One day while talking to my new next door neighbor, he pointed out our property line and the “grown over” road on the border of our lot. He said to me that this road used to be the entrance into the adjoining state park, and the name of the road is Old Stage Coach Road. I really felt we were home.

Craig Armstrong