A Few Years Ago, some irritating and painful growths appeared on a portion of my foot and toes. I knew that these could be healed solely through prayer, and I prayed specifically about it on several occasions. But the condition did not change.
A short time later, someone called me to request Christian Science treatment, and I readily agreed. While praying one night regarding this case, I spent quite some time considering a statement in Science and Health that reads, "You render the divine law of healing obscure and void, when you weigh the human in the scale with the divine, or limit in any direction of thought the omnipresence and omnipotence of God" (p. 445). I searched my thought to see if I was limiting the reach of omnipresent Love and its practical, transforming power, and I prayed to be free of any such hindrance. Soon I gained a clear conviction that Love's power was everywhere, meeting every need.
I learned later that this treatment had a direct healing impact on the person I was helping, but it also prepared the way for what was to happen next in my own situation. After praying deeply with the passage from Science and Health, I went briefly into another room, and as I was barefoot, I found my attention drawn to my toes. Immediately a statement from Proverbs came to me: "Wilt thou set thine eyes upon that which is not?" (23:5). I then recalled Mary Baker Eddy's statement in Science and Health: "Disease is always induced by a false sense mentally entertained, not destroyed" (p. 411). Right then, I saw that instead of continuing to believe that there was an abnormal condition on my foot, I needed to turn my thoughts to God and to reject the evidence of disease. I needed to realize more fully that God, the only Cause, did not and could not create an abnormal or harmful condition, and therefore such a condition is only the false testimony of the material senses. I thought again of the prayerful work I'd been recently doing—not limiting the omnipresent, healing power of Love in any way—and I was overcome with the certainty that I was healed.
