There is immense satisfaction to be gained from church work, because it is based on giving. Christ Jesus taught simply, "Give, and it shall be given unto you." Luke 6:38. We today can truly be his followers if we let unselfish love characterize our actions.
In Science and Health Mrs. Eddy makes this striking statement: "Whatever holds human thought in line with unselfed love, receives directly the divine power." Science and Health, p. 192. This statement precedes an account of her healing of a man who was dying. Mrs. Eddy's expression of "unselfed love" was evidently so pure that it reflected the divine power, which alone regenerates and heals. Our aim can be to express this same quality of thought in our church work. Then people are bound to be spiritually refreshed and to find healing at our services, testimony meetings, lectures, and in our Sunday Schools and Reading Rooms. Our basis of success is our willingness to exclude a self-centered personal sense of things from our work. We have to stand aside, so to speak, in order to allow the full force of the healing Christ to be felt by those in need of healing.
On one occasion, when I was serving as First Reader in a branch Church of Christ, Scientist, I became ill. As the time for the Wednesday testimony meeting approached, I asked a Christian Science practitioner for help through prayer. As I stepped out onto the platform to conduct the meeting, I was suddenly healed. It seemed clear to me that as soon as my thought was lifted off the trouble and I began to concern myself with giving to others, I was receptive to the divine power that heals, and so was immediately free. What was being given out in the reading was, in fact, the healing truth of man's total freedom as the perfect, spiritual offspring of God and this freeing truth must have an effect upon all those who are responsive to it.
