My upbringing in a family of Christian Scientists taught me that prayer is a powerful way to think, a way to habitually turn my attention to spiritual things. As a child, I learned that God is even closer than my consciousness, and that pondering His goodness and power brings confidence and peace. I found that the surer I felt about God’s love for me, the more natural it was to take a mental stand against everything unlike Him—against mortal feelings like fear, envy, sadness, or anger, and against sickness, injury, and loss.
I knew sickness to be a mistaken view of God and His creation.
As I grew, prayer sometimes felt like a response to a gentle invitation to know God or to grow my spiritual understanding. One instance of this happened when I was about nine years old. I had come down with intense flu-like symptoms. My parents made sure I was comfortable in bed, and they began to pray for me.
I knew sickness to be a mistaken view of God and His creation, including me. Even at that young age, I’d read these profound statements by Mary Baker Eddy: “Everything good or worthy, God made. Whatever is valueless or baneful, He did not make,—hence its unreality.… Sin, sickness, and death must be deemed as devoid of reality as they are of good, God” (Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 525). But I wasn’t sure how to correct the overwhelming perception that I was ill.
As I quietly listened for inspiration, it came to me to read a poem by Mrs. Eddy titled “Communion Hymn.” Its third stanza has these words about the Christ, God’s loving message to us:
Sinner, it calls you,—“Come to this fountain,
Cleanse the foul senses within;
’Tis the Spirit that makes pure,
That exalts thee, and will cure
All thy sorrow and sickness and sin.” (Poems, p. 75)
Right there in my bedroom, I felt as if I had received an invitation—an appeal to think about being immersed in Spirit, God. Immediately I perceived my real selfhood as pure and strong and well—as a divine idea rather than a material body. I could sense the mistaken, or sinning, view of reality being cleansed from my thought. In that instant, I was totally healed of the illness.
Over the years, as my understanding of God deepened, prayer often became an acceptance of a divine demand—a call for the spiritual clear-sightedness that not only treasures God’s good creation but actively rejects its opposite.
One fall morning years later, on the way to a job interview, I headed down some subway stairs and caught the heel of my shoe in the hem of my long coat. I fell several steps, seriously injuring one of my ankles. Continuing to the meeting seemed impossible, so with difficulty I made my way back home.
An alarming lump had formed on the ankle. I felt the strong demand to pray—to be certain of the unreality of this condition and to reject it. The penetrating words of “the scientific statement of being” (see Science and Health, p. 468) settled into my thought. This statement unequivocally denies any actuality to matter and affirms the allness of God as Spirit, and man as entirely spiritual, in His likeness.
I firmly declared these six short lines aloud, feeling an authoritative trust in God. My ankle quickly resumed its normal shape, and in moments I was completely free of the injury. I left for the subway—and even made it to my appointment on time.
Many of the healings I’ve experienced in my life have called for more sustained spiritual reasoning and communion with God. But it’s become clear to me that whenever my thought has most wholeheartedly embraced the invitation and demand to pray, thinking and prayer have become one. My deepest prayers have turned out to be my best thinking—and vice versa. Certain healing has been the result.
Spiritual reasoning and heartfelt outreach to God are natural to us as spiritual thinkers. As we welcome the discipline of prayer, the bounds of human thought expand and we approximate the biblical charge to “pray without ceasing” (I Thessalonians 5:17).
Mrs. Eddy portrays continuing prayer this way: “Watch diligently; never desert the post of spiritual observation and self-examination. Strive for self-abnegation, justice, meekness, mercy, purity, love. Let your light reflect Light. Have no ambition, affection, nor aim apart from holiness. Forget not for a moment, that God is All-in-all—therefore, that in reality there is but one cause and effect” (Miscellaneous Writings 1883—1896, pp. 154–155).
We can all accept the holy invitation and demand to pray this way—to be spiritual thinkers every moment, every day.
