Almost everything we endeavor in life, if it’s to be accomplished successfully, depends on fundamentals. The artist, whether a painter or a potter, has to have mastered the basics of her medium well before the first masterpiece is created. The musician has to know so thoroughly the fundamentals of his music and his instrument that those essential rules and rudiments have become a part of his thinking and his expression long before he ever plays the first concerto. The same is true for the dancer, the poet, the tailor, the lawyer, the homemaker, the auto mechanic, the wilderness guide, the school teacher, the farmer, the computer programmer, the airplane pilot, or the Alpine climber.
Understanding and mastering the fundamentals is just as vital for the Christian healer as well. Students of Christian Science should come to feel so at one with the basic elements of the Science of healing that the foundational principles are ready in thought—naturally and spontaneously, whenever the need arises.
So much of our success, whether in the day-to-day affairs of life or in the healing work itself, is a matter of preparation. It’s in mastering the fundamentals that we become prepared— whether to paint a canvas, to play the concerto, or even to heal the lame in body and spirit who are coming daily to the gate of the temple, “expecting to receive something,” as recorded in the Bible’s book of Acts (see 3:1–8.) All kinds of calls for help come each day to the gate of the Christian Science healer’s consciousness, expecting to receive God’s grace and healing. Are we prepared? Is our thinking clear, focused, alert and sharp—inspired?
