Healing in Christian Science is so complete when it comes, the whole episode is likely to be forgotten. This is because the healing results from the operation of divine Mind, God. The discordant condition disappears from our thought and therefore from our lives. However, some healings remain in memory as landmarks, signposts, as it were, on our journey. One such healing for me was of the smoking habit.
Until my late teens I knew little about any religious instruction other than Christian Science. However, when I went to university I was shocked and intrigued to find there were many other ways of living. I took on some of them, including smoking, to which I became heavily addicted. I see now that although I had had Christian Science in our home and at school, and had attended a Christian Science Sunday School, I never really made it my own. Nevertheless, the teaching was soundly established, for even while I explored various philosophies, I never denied the basic truths of Christian Science.
When I came to a real testing time, and all the "new ideas" let me down with a bump, that phrase from the twenty-third Psalm kept coming to me, "He restoreth my soul" (v. 3). At first I wouldn't listen, arguing that it was not honest to turn to God when I had so neglected Him. But the message persisted, loud and clear, and I realized "God is no respecter of persons" (Acts 10:34). He is always here, whether we recognize it or not. Suppose I had been a student of music and had left it for a number of years, would I hesitate to go back to it because I didn't "deserve" to?
