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My husband and I purchased a ceramic tile while traveling as newlyweds in the Western United States and delighted in these lines from a poem inscribed on it: “Now you will feel no rain, as each will be a shelter for the other. ” Over the years, in our several homes, I have read that tile every day and am reminded how marriage is a protection and a blessing to both partners amid life’s many challenges.

The author shows how when we fill our thought with spiritual truths, sin and sickness lose their reality in our consciousness and disappear.

As a Christian Science chaplain in the United States Army, I was in the country of Jordan, ministering to soldiers in my unit. Several asked if I would baptize them in the Jordan River, where the Bible says Jesus was baptized.

“Abandon all hope , ye who enter here. ” Dante’s epic poem, The Divine Comedy, certainly presents an arresting image of the gates of hell.

Paul, encouraging the newly minted Christians at Thessalonica, wrote, “Ye are all the children of light, and the children of the day: we are not of the night, nor of darkness” ( I Thessalonians 5:5 ). And to the Ephesians he wrote, “Walk as children of light” ( Ephesians 5:8 ).

Over the years , thousands of verified healings brought about by prayer have been published in The Christian Science Journal, Sentinel, and Herald magazines. Sometimes, those healed will say how it’s as though whatever hardship or illness they faced—and were healed of—“never happened.

Running a little late one morning years ago, I sat down to quickly read the weekly Bible Lesson from the Christian Science Quarterly, hoping to glean an inspiring idea to take to work with me. The Lesson included the story of Daniel thrown into a lions’ den for his refusal to stop praying to God.

Legend has it that upon noticing his body displaced a certain amount of water as he got into a bathtub, Archimedes made an important scientific discovery, causing him to exclaim, “Eureka!” One night I had my own eureka moment—in the bathtub—that involved the displacement not of H 2 O but of a false concept of my relationship to God. Earlier that day an article in the Journal titled “ God doesn’t have grandchildren ” had caught my attention.

One summer, when a friend and I were taking a vacation together, it became clear that we had completely different views and goals—so different that things she said and did hurt and annoyed me. In retrospect these differences were trivial, as I no longer even remember what they were.

Life can be challenging. Sometimes we may feel we’d like an army to help us fight our battles.