In Christian Science there are no formulas for healing. No one-size-fits-all approach. Christian Science is all about following Christ Jesus’ healing example and understanding the truth he taught. The Church Mary Baker Eddy founded, the Church of Christ, Scientist, was designed to “reinstate primitive Christianity and its lost element of healing” (Mary Baker Eddy, Church Manual, p. 17). How good to know that Christian healing is still available to each of us right here, right now!
In the Church Manual, a book that gives important and helpful directives for members of The Mother Church, Mrs. Eddy writes on page 43, “No member shall use written formulas, nor permit his patients or pupils to use them, as auxiliaries to teaching Christian Science or for healing the sick.” Fresh spiritual intuitions, angel messages—thoughts from God—are the answers to prayer for a Christian Scientist. And I’ve found that these angel messages can come to us in countless ways.
I’d learned to listen for, and expect, messages from divine Mind.
So why doesn’t a formulaic approach to prayer help? Our own thought is where healing happens. What may bring a spiritual transformation of thought to one person, may not inspire someone else in quite the same way or be the key to realizing his or her freedom. We learn to rely on God for individual inspiration, for individual direction, for individual guidance. We learn to listen for just the right divine ideas that will lead us toward healing.
I learned many years ago not to look to other people’s opinions or prescribed “formulas” for healing. Their conclusions may have worked for them, but it was up to me to listen to God to discover the ideas I needed that would change my own thought in order for me to grow spiritually and feel closer to Him. Our goal should always be to understand our relationship, as a spiritual idea, to Spirit, God.
At one time, I had spent six months flat on my back, unable to carry out daily tasks, unable to walk or drive, and since I was a single parent that meant I needed to ask for help. Lots of help! During those months, I’d learned to listen for, and expect, ideas from divine Mind, which we can count on to guide us and heal us. I loved praying about my identity as being the pure and perfect and exact, spiritual reflection of God, always one with God—no matter how difficult it might be to see that perfect man at times. Mrs. Eddy, put it this way, “As a drop of water is one with the ocean, a ray of light one with the sun, even so God and man, Father and son, are one in being” (Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 361).
I read testimony after testimony of healing through Christian Science. Then I asked the question, “Why me?” because I wasn’t seeing hoped-for results. But I found that got me nowhere. Who is this “me” who was having such a hard time? It certainly wasn’t the man I’d been learning about in the Bible and in Science and Health.
A family member, trying to be helpful, said he would care for my children until I was able to, if I’d consent to his taking me to an emergency room of a hospital to get a diagnosis and begin medical treatment. I was desperate to sort out the care for my children, so I agreed. Within the hour we were driving into the parking lot of the local hospital.
What may bring a spiritual transformation of thought to one person, may not inspire someone else in quite the same way.
Despite the situation I found myself in, I knew in my heart that trusting God to care for His child, me, was the best care I could have. Lying there in the back of the car, I knew that in that moment I could choose to trust God with all my heart for my well-being and for my children’s well-being. It wasn’t that I was ignoring this demand before. It was just that now I needed, as never before, to see that, as an idea of God, I could only be well, pain-free, pure, and strong. Formulas or the mere repetition of phrases just wouldn’t have worked. I needed to stand with God and feel God’s presence. Those affirmations of truth I was hearing were God’s messages to me. Soon I found myself thanking my dear family member, but asking him to turn around and take me home. He did. That’s when I began to see progress.
After this, I was inspired to turn daily to Mrs. Eddy’s poem, “‘Feed my Sheep,’” set to music in the Christian Science Hymnal, with great expectancy of healing (No. 304). The ideas in that poem were just what I needed and within two weeks I was feeling much better and was able to apply for work as a schoolteacher. This was not someone else’s solution or a general formula. It was God’s healing ideas for me, in my great need, showing me that my Shepherd was caring for me. Every moment. Now.
It turned out that the only teaching job opening in my field of work, in the middle of the school year, was teaching gymnastics! And I was able to do so. There I was; tumbling, swinging from parallel bars, doing jumping jacks, and skipping rope, all the while thanking God.
God, our Shepherd, had shown me how to go “O’er the hillside steep,” as Mrs. Eddy’s poem puts it. No one-size-fits-all formulas needed. God had shown me the way to go, and He will show you and care for you, too.
