Prayer means different things to different people. In Christian Science, prayer is considered effective to the degree it brings thought into harmony with the ultimate truth that a perfect God, Spirit, has created the true selfhood of each of us in His own image and likeness. This submitting of the human to the divine is explained as the effect of the Christ, where the Christ is not a corporeal savior but “the true idea voicing good, the divine message from God to men speaking to the human consciousness” (Mary Baker Eddy, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 332).
I have often experienced healing through this approach to prayer. Some of the healings have been of bodily dysfunctions. For example, I’ve been healed through prayer of a growth on my leg, a badly infected thumb, a breathing difficulty, and more. Other healings have involved relationships, financial issues, or simply the need to feel a sense of peace and purpose.
Some might argue that the prayer involved was coincidental and that healing would have come anyway. However, to me the correlation between prayer, which acknowledges one’s relationship to God, and improved mental and physical well-being, makes sense both logically (accepting the premise of Christian Science stated above), as well as intuitively, and is sometimes so immediate as to be undeniable.
