Members of branch Churches of Christ, Scientist, often find themselves being asked to pray for the church services, the Sunday School, the Reading Room, a lecture, or their committees. A frequent response is, "How can I find the time to pray for all these activities? How can I give a specific, scientific treatment each day to each separate activity of church?"'
The first answer might be found in the question, "What is prayer?" Mrs. Eddy's chapter on Prayer in Science and Health describes it. On page 1 we read, "Desire is prayer; and no loss can occur from trusting God with our desires, that they may be moulded and exalted before they take form in words and in deeds." This immediately changes the whole context of our work. We are dealing with more than verbal statements of truth and denials of evil. If our desire is for the spiritual progress of our church, we will not be thinking about who may not be doing his or her part in church work, we will not be concerned about those who are not coming to our services or Sunday School or Reading Room. We will have shifted the challenge to the only place it can ever exist for us— to our own consciousness. How great is our desire for our church's progress in demonstrating the healing power of Christian Science?
What do we envision for each aspect of our church—our services and Sunday School overflowing, our Reading Room full of students and strangers, our lectures attracting humanity? Do we see the validity of our religion as being manifest in healings, in better communities, in progress toward a peaceful, prosperous world?
