WHILE PREPARING TO LEAVE for a two-day business trip to a very rural part of Oregon, I began to experience pain in one of my molars. Although annoying, the pain was tolerable, and I attempted to just work through it.
However, once I arrived at my destination, I found that the discomfort in my tooth made it very awkward for me to eat. I considered inquiring about a dentist in the area, but having traveled hundreds of miles and at great expense for this trip, I felt I had too much work to do.
Instead, I turned my thoughts to prayer, as this is the way I'm accustomed to dealing with difficulties. I focused on some simple spiritual truths that I've learned through Christian Science—truths about my inherent perfection and wholeness as a child of God. Then I committed to completing the work I had scheduled for that day.
I spent the evening studying the weekly Bible Lesson (found in the Christian Science Quarterly) and praying earnestly to claim my God-given perfection and, therefore, my exemption from any painful condition. The situation eased to a point where I could at least fall asleep. However, I awoke in the middle of the night with extreme pain in my jaw that literally incapacitated me and brought me to tears. My first thought was to call a Christian Science practitioner for support through prayer, but I really wasn't even able to speak. So I decided to call my wife, who was already long asleep, and I asked her to call the practitioner for me.
Within several minutes, the pain had completely stopped. I was overcome with gratitude for the practitioner's instant and tireless response to my call for help. Even though I seemed to be in the middle of nowhere, and seeing a dentist at that early-morning hour in this little, remote town was not even an option, the prayerful help of the practitioner was immediately available and effective. I was able to go back to sleep, and awoke the next day completely free—able to eat normally and continue the business needed for the trip.
Several weeks later, though, my tooth started to exhibit some of the same symptoms, with an increasing pain developing in my jaw. I made an appointment with a dentist whom I knew to be very respectful of my reliance on prayer for healing. He informed me that the tooth was abscessed and needed to be removed right away. He told me that the condition was very serious, and could be fatal if not taken care of immediately. He advised that I schedule an appointment with an oral surgeon at once.
This was a wake-up call to me, and I decided to take the rest of the day off to go home and pray even more earnestly about the situation.
Considering the dentist's alarming news that my condition could be fatal, I immediately began to think about what Christian Science states about the unreality of death. I realized that as a creation of God, who is perfect and immortal, I was also perfect and immortal. God did not make His creation less than perfect. And this tooth could no more die or decay than I could die or decay.
I also prayed with the concept that this wasn't about trying to change or preserve a tooth. I didn't have to make this tooth better. In fact, my perfection wasn't measured by material conditions at all. I was spiritual, and I was already perfect.
Mary Baker Eddy stated in her book Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures: "The true theory of the universe, including man, is not in material history but in spiritual development. Inspired thought relinquishes a material, sensual, and mortal theory of the universe, and adopts the spiritual and immortal" (p. 547). It was this inspired thought and spiritual development that I wanted to experience as part of my true nature, not a material, historical timeline of a tooth that the material senses claimed began to form from conception, and could only live a finite number of years before it was no longer useful. I realized that accepting the dentist's pronouncement meant that I would be accepting the notion that life is in matter and must die. Agreeing to that concept for a tooth would be agreeing to the concept of death for everything else.
My thoughts and actions were corroborating what Mrs. Eddy wrote about overcoming death: "The sinless joy,—the perfect harmony and immortality of Life, possessing unlimited divine beauty and goodness without a single bodily pleasure or pain,—constitutes the only veritable, indestructible man, whose being is spiritual. This state of existence is scientific and intact,—a perfection discernible only by those who have the final understanding of Christ in divine Science. Death can never hasten this state of existence, for death must be overcome, not submitted to, before immortality appears" (ibid., p. 76).
As I immersed myself in study and prayer that afternoon, I experienced that inspired thought, of which Mrs. Eddy wrote, and was able to relinquish the material, sensual theory of the universe and adopt one that was spiritual and immortal. I actually felt things physically adjusting in my jaw as a result. The pain stopped, and I knew the healing was complete. I am grateful to report that I have felt no more discomfort from this situation. I have been able to eat without any difficulty ever since.
SHERWOOD, OREGON, US
