Sitting in a typical Christian Science church service, we might well understand why someone looking around might feel that on the surface of things they have little in common with the other people in attendance. There might not be anyone the same age, race, political party, income bracket, or with remotely similar hobbies and interests. Of course, many people have found lifelong friends, or even spouses, at church. But the thread that binds church members together is seldom evident on the surface. It isn’t until you’re sitting there, praying with all your heart, and you suddenly become conscious that others are praying, too. And you feel it. You truly feel it—that shared, powerful unity of spirit that is affirming and reaching out to feel more of infinite Spirit, Love, and Truth, more of God. You know then and there that the world is greatly helped by Church.
Or perhaps you’ve had the experience of attending a Wednesday testimony meeting when you really didn’t feel like going, let alone sharing anything about God with other people. Yet at some point, the message being read from the Bible and Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, by Mary Baker Eddy, stirs a feeling of meaningfulness in your heart, or a person stands and shares how a deeper understanding of the Christ has brought healing to his or her life. And the sincerity, humility, and spirit of Christ-healing of that testimony stays with you and brings healing to some aspect of your own life.
Any feeling of separation from one another in church is replaced by a genuine gratitude and recognition of the fact that you all are united in a love of God and man, and that is what gives our church its reason for being. In the letter to the Ephesians in the Bible, the writer speaks of this experience of Christ as breaking down the “wall of partition between us” (2:14).
