Like the disciples of old each seeker for light reaches a stage in his mental journey where he cries out: Lord, teach me how to pray. Our prayer is governed by our concept of God. As this concept of Deity changes through the influence of the teachings of Christian Science, the mental process of communion with Him, which we have termed prayer, changes accordingly. A limited human concept of God will find expression in imploring and material petitioning, while the recognition of God as Love best expresses itself in such communion with Him as shall result in loving and serving and healing.
This point is illustrated in the writer's experience. An early religious training was of a God who knew good and evil, who sent sickness and trouble upon His children. So long as this was believed it was also believed that to ask God to heal sickness was prayer. When this petition was not answered but the sense of disease increased, thought was filled with doubt and fear, while God seemed unknowable. When illumination came through the study of Christian Science, then God was revealed as infinite Love, a God who knows no evil, no disease, and sends only blessings upon His children; yea, who made man in His own likeness to reflect Him, and moreover maintains this image as perfect as He is perfect, —indestructible in Love.
Could one offer the same prayer or same petition to such a God as had formerly been sent up to a throne somewhere above? Instinctively then there came the declarations of health as an everlasting fact; that man's health is never lost but is indestructible in Life; that the Father's infinite goodness is flowing out to all, and good alone is the heritage of man, freedom his divine right. Needless to say, this prayer was answered; the mental sense of disease gave way before the assurances of health, and gradually harmonious action was restored in every function of the body. God was known as a God at hand, and prayer became the daily, hourly communion with Him who is Life and Love.
