For several weeks I had had a numbness in my arm and severe chest pain. I prayed, and there was alleviation of the pain but not healing. When the pain started to grow more severe, I became impatient. I strode back and forth in my study, praying. I declared over and over again my freedom from illness as God's image and likeness. Suddenly I came to a stop in front of a printed folder. My gaze fell on a sentence that said something to this effect: "Receptivity is a quality of God and therefore a quality of man."
I paused, feeling I had something to learn. But before I could pursue my thought further, several questions came to mind: "Can you say that you have a receptive thought? Do you actually know what it means to be receptive? Has your prayer so far been a wordy, intellectual argument? Or has your heart been profoundly touched by the truth of what you've been declaring?"
My impatience abated. When I looked up the meaning of receptivity in some dictionaries, I found that genuine receptivity is an unprejudiced openness, a willingness—with open arms, so to speak—to receive the new and, also very important, to respond to it. It is a joyous taking in of something that leads to a changed perception and changed response.
