As the Berlin-Moscow Express pulled slowly out of the Warsaw railroad station where my husband and I had got aboard, we made ourselves comfortable for the twenty-four-hour journey east. I had barely pulled my Bible, and my copy of Science and Health by Mrs. Eddy, from my traveling bag, when a young Russian woman on the berth across from me peeled out of her covers, sat up, and introduced herself. One of her cheeks was badly swollen, and she hastened to explain that she was in agony from a severe toothache that had plagued her for five days, the entire time of her visit with her husband, who was on short-term assignment in Berlin. None of the medicines she had taken had given her any relief, she said.
We introduced ourselves and said we were sorry that she was not well.
My heart immediately went out to her as I recalled some difficult bouts with aching teeth when I was a teen, with no one to turn to except a dentist of whom I was deathly afraid. All that had changed when I came into Christian Science. I learned that in resolving troubles through spiritual means according to its teaching, healing of pain or other difficulties was always as close as my thought was to God. But there I was, rolling comfortably through the Polish countryside in the company of someone who was in dire need of healing. What was I going to do beyond my brief expression of sympathy?
