Articles

Arriving early one Sunday morning to support prayerfully the service of my local branch Church of Christ, Scientist, I noticed gulls rising, floating, and soaring outside the church edifice as the gentle wind currents actively lifted them.   This reminded me of what my mother had taught me about God when I was a child.

What a joy to know that God is available every moment, providing answers to all our needs. Several years ago, my parents were notified that our home would have to be demolished in three years to make way for a new freeway.

Years ago, a friend shared with me a healing she experienced through prayer, which included a powerful sense that God was present and all was well. At the time, she remarked that the thing that stood out to her was the feeling she had.

Do you find that things which once were simple, like regularly attending church services, now seem complicated or difficult? Do you now have to face pressure from family members to sleep in on Sundays, or go away for the weekend? For a midweek testimony meeting, there might be concerns about traffic or public transit congestion, security issues, fatigue, an employer’s expectations that you work into the evening, or trouble driving at night. All this may make going to church feel like going to the moon.

In my sadness after a very dear friend passed away, I told a colleague I was dreading the upcoming Fourth of July celebration. That was because my friend—someone I thought of as family—would always invite me to watch the fireworks with her and other friends at her house.

Jesus did not change sick people into well people. He understood that in reality no one has ever been unwell in any way.

I live at the beach and swim most days in the Pacific Ocean. Some days I float and let the tide take me to my destination.

Oh, no! There it went—my friend’s brand-new cellphone—over the side of her kayak and into the lake. The water was only about five feet deep, but the lake floor was too soft to support the weight of a person, so we four friends in four kayaks gently searched the ground beneath us with our paddles.

I was raised as a student of Christian Science, and I had certainly accepted and even found healing in the understanding that man is the image and likeness of God, as we learn from the first chapter of Genesis, and is therefore spiritual. But I can remember a time when I was overly focused on life as a spiritual journey that required me to dutifully make progress.

When a Hebrew religious leader asked Jesus, “Which is the first commandment of all?” he answered, “The first of all the commandments is, Hear, O Israel; The Lord our God is one Lord: and thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength” ( Mark 12:28–30 ).   That statement emphatically conveyed the foundation of the Master’s ministry.