I give thanks to God for the inspiration to share a healing and a problem solved as a result of genuine love for my neighbor.
The healing happened in Soyo (Zaire province, Angola) in 1998. I had been transferred to that small town from Luanda, where I had worked as a teacher in the Ministry of Education. In Luanda, I had taught in the Sunday School of the informal Christian Science group of Hoji ya Henda, which now is Second Church of Christ, Scientist, Luanda.
One night, I woke up with chest pain and could hardly breathe. I also couldn’t pray. At that moment, I remembered the kind words that my Sunday School students had told me at my farewell to Luanda. They told me that God blesses us and takes care of us. I felt completely enveloped by the tenderness, love, and purity expressed by those children and was touched by the spiritual truth of their words. Within a short time all the symptoms disappeared, and I peacefully went back to sleep. I never again experienced similar symptoms.
The second experience happened when I was in South Africa, in September of last year. I was staying in a hotel, and one morning I noticed my passport was missing. I looked in my room and did not find it. I had no idea how the passport had disappeared.
I immediately turned my thought to God and refuted aggressive mental suggestions, such as that the setbacks would be huge (I was five hours away from the Angolan consulate, I do not communicate well in English, and I needed to present my passport everywhere, even to exchange money); that some young people I had met in a restaurant the day before, and who had been so nice to me, could have stolen my passport; and other aggressive suggestions. After praying, when my thought was at peace, I let the personnel in the reception office know about what had happened. It didn’t take long for the news to spread among other guests in the hotel. But I was reassured, for, as Mary Baker Eddy writes in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, “The calm and exalted thought or spiritual apprehension is at peace” (p. 506).
When other guests asked me about the situation, I lovingly answered them that every problem has a solution. I also told them that nothing could take away my peace.
I really felt that everyone there was a child of God, my brothers and sisters.
What could have given me so much confidence, peace, and reassurance? It was prayer, based on spiritual understanding, as we learn in Christian Science. I strove to genuinely love the South African people. I really felt that everyone there was a child of God, my brothers and sisters. I discerned that it would be impossible for any of them to truly steal something from me, because God created us all in His likeness, and therefore we all express the nature of divine Principle, Truth, and Love. This thought denied any possibility that I might nurture resentment toward the person who had committed that act. I was filled with a true sense of goodness. My heart was overflowing with love. These thoughts—that helped me gain such peace—are based on two Bible stories that came to mind on that occasion.
The first was of the prophet Elisha, who, by praying to God, was protected from the attack of Syrian troops and instead captured them and led them to Samaria (see II Kings 6:8–23). There, the king of Israel asked Elisha if he should smite them. But the prophet told the king to give them something to eat and drink and send them back to Syria, and it was so. And “the bands of Syria came no more into the land of Israel.” Elisha probably saw the true innocence of those captive soldiers, as children of God. I decided I would not seek vengeance against the person who had taken my passport, but that I would respond with gratitude and love when the document was returned to me.
The second Bible story tells when the prophet Elijah made worshippers of Baal realize that “the Lord, he is the God” (see I Kings 18:17–39). At the beginning of this story, Elijah asked the people, “How long halt ye between two opinions?” I gained the conviction that the God whom I trusted, the only God, divine Love, is supreme, and His power destroys the so-called gods of mortal belief, which claim that God’s children can be thieves and criminals.
God created all His children in the image of Love—pure, complete, honest. The same Love that embraces me, embraces everyone. The same Love that sustains me, sustains everyone. Therefore, a child of God cannot steal or harm another child of God. I was totally sure that Love would overcome error.
With those thoughts, I slept soundly. The next morning, I called a dear Christian Science practitioner and asked her to help me through prayer. At the end of the day, as soon as I returned to the hotel from the university where I was doing my work, which consisted of laboratory analysis of yams, the front desk lady came to me smiling with my passport in her hands, telling me that the cleaning lady had found it under my bed. I did not question the story of “under my bed,” even though I knew I had looked there. I just thanked God wholeheartedly.
A week later, I moved into a residence sponsored by the university, where I lived until the end of November. During that period, I had the opportunity to visit the hotel and the staff. Moved by the love I felt for all of them, without any exception, I interacted lovingly with each one of them, as dear brothers and sisters.
How good it is to know that God is Love and that “the vital part, the heart and soul of Christian Science, is Love” (Science and Health, p. 113). It is wonderful to know and prove this sublime truth in our daily lives.
Originally written in Portuguese, this first appeared in the May 2016 Portuguese, Spanish, French, and German editions of The Herald of Christian Science.
