Some years ago, a group of friends and I were invited to a marriage celebration. Immediately after we attended, we each received an anonymous phone call informing us that we had been poisoned by mistake. We were not the planned target; the placement of the guests had been switched around at the very last moment, and we had taken the table—and eaten the food—of the intended victims. Poisoning is unfortunately not an uncommon practice in my country. Celebrations are sometimes the place where rival families attempt to settle enmities. The phone call was meant to warn us to take all necessary measures to prevent the worst, since the poison was intended to be strong enough to kill.
I had the divine right to health.
I was quite scared. I immediately began to show symptoms of poisoning, and they were alarming. My friends and family became worried, and some people close to me suggested that I take medicines or go to the hospital right away.
But at the same time, I remembered a promise found in the Bible, where Christ Jesus says: “In my name … they shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover” (Mark 16:17, 18). Based on this promise, I decided to find healing by treating myself as taught in Christian Science.
Mary Baker Eddy writes in the Christian Science textbook, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures: “Become conscious for a single moment that Life and intelligence are purely spiritual,—neither in nor of matter,—and the body will then utter no complaints” (p. 14). When we become aware of a spiritual fact, our thought starts to accept this fact, starts to trust it. Indeed, I was becoming more and more conscious of the fact that what I had eaten could not harm me in any way. I began to pray to understand who I really was: the perfect image and likeness of God, reflecting all the divine qualities, without a single element capable of harming me. I knew well that whenever we trust God, we realize that He always meets all our needs. He heals us and never disappoints us. This spiritual consciousness frees us from the belief in any form of evil.
I also prayed with another passage in Science and Health: “Hold thought steadfastly to the enduring, the good, and the true, and you will bring these into your experience proportionably to their occupancy of your thoughts” (p. 261). Life, health, unselfishness, love, abundance, truth, goodness, joy, strength, gentleness, humility, honesty, dignity, innocence, peace, are part of our real nature and of our divine sonship. You and I can know that under no circumstance can these qualities be taken away from us. They are always ours, now and forever.
I was becoming more and more conscious of the fact that what I had eaten could not harm me in any way.
I had the divine right to health, and the poison had no right and no power to hurt me. Gradually, as I claimed this right, the symptoms diminished, until they totally disappeared. It took about two months for this healing to be complete, but I would like to add that I was able to continue going to work all during this time. All my relatives and friends were overjoyed for my healing.
I am grateful to our Father-Mother, God, for Life, Truth, and Love, and for the “glorious liberty” (Science and Health, p. 227) that we have divinely received, and that is always ours by divine right, as children of the Most High.
