Recently I had a physical healing that also taught me a lesson about how to pray for church. At the time I had been getting quite concerned about developments in both my own branch church and The Mother Church. Often I found myself in discussions about the challenges facing the Church, and I decided to pray specifically about this.
Then one Sunday while I was moving a table in the Sunday School, a sizable splinter of wood went into my finger. I managed to get it out and then washed the area. At first everything looked fine, but over the next few days I could feel that there was still something underneath the skin. The same sort of thing had happened to me when I was a child, and a doctor told my parents they would have to soak my finger in a bowl of very hot water every day for weeks. Now years later, having become a Christian Scientist, I knew that this was an opportunity to demonstrate the truth of God's healing power.
I was well acquainted with the sentence in Science and Health that says "A spiritual idea has not a single element of error, and this truth removes properly whatever is offensive." I held to that thought, and I strove to understand it spiritually. But I didn't know how this was going to happen. I kept wondering if I should do something to help it along physically. I recognized that this approach would not help me rely totally on God. However, the problem grew worse.
