I’m most grateful for the understanding of God’s healing power revealed through Christian Science. And I’m grateful to have my third testimony published in the Christian Science periodicals.
About four years ago, a small growth developed on my chest, and it continued expanding for three years. At least twice during this time, after I passed through a body-scanning machine at the airport, I was asked by the agent to unbutton my shirt so he could inspect the growth, which showed up as an unknown entity on his machine.
I began praying at the outset of this experience. One day, in desperation, I visited my sister, a retired X-ray technician, to show her the growth and ask for her physician’s name, since I was thinking about getting a diagnosis.
I’m not sure why I was considering such an action. Through the years, I had been consistently healed through Christian Science treatment, so it was natural for me to want to rely on God for healing, no matter what a doctor would say. I remembered that Mary Baker Eddy writes in her book Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures: “You should treat sickness mentally just as you would sin, except that you must not tell the patient that he is sick nor give names to diseases, for such a course increases fear, the foundation of disease, and impresses more deeply the wrong mind-picture. A Christian Scientist’s medicine is Mind, the divine Truth that makes man free” (p. 453).
After studying that passage, I decided to press on with Christian Science treatment. For me, a medical diagnosis would be based on an assessment that man is mortal, whereas my assessment as a Christian Scientist needed to be based on the spiritual nature of man as God’s likeness. I understood that false beliefs about man needed to be corrected in thought, and that would bring healing. I prayed along with the help of a Christian Science practitioner some of the time, but mostly I prayed on my own.
A helpful Bible verse from Ecclesiastes fortified me: “I know that, whatsoever God doeth, it shall be for ever: nothing can be put to it, nor any thing taken from it” (3:14). I reasoned that no unwanted nor harmful growth could be “put” to God’s man, God’s image and likeness (see Genesis 1:26, 27). And conversely, nothing could be “taken” from him. God, who is the divine, all-intelligent Mind, created holy ideas that all are in harmony with one another. Those harmoniously controlled ideas could never be taken from me, because they are included in the spiritual man’s eternal identity. The false belief that God’s ideas could become harmful and encroach on each other had no reality in Truth.
The result of this prayerful work was that one day the growth opened of its own accord, and within a week everything drained from it. That happened over a year ago, and that was the end of the problem.
More recently, when I was leaving for church via the stairs in my condo building, I slipped and ended up “skiing” down four to five stairs on my shins and the tops of my feet. The stairs are concrete and have metal edges. After coming to a stop and overcoming the shock, I untangled myself and got up. I couldn’t afford the time to check out my legs, because I was to serve as a Reader at my church that morning. Later I noticed that some of the scrapes from my fall had bled a bit, though that didn’t show on my trousers. No one in church was aware of what had happened.
After church, I prayed more deeply about the situation. As taught in Christian Science, I realized that man is spiritual, God’s idea. Thus, in reality, man could not make a misstep or have an accident, because God, divine Mind, is always governing man, maintaining his safety.
Again in the evening, I prayed more about man’s true status. As I did so, the bones on the tops of my feet, which had seemed out of alignment and were painful, readjusted to their normal position without any manipulation on my part. There was no further pain, and a month later I was hiking in the Alps and walking daily on a five-week trip in Europe.
I am most grateful for the ever-present Christ that operates in our consciousness to reveal God’s power for good. And I’m grateful for everything that supports the Christian Science movement: Sunday church services, Wednesday testimony meetings, Sunday School, Reading Rooms, lectures, and Christian Science class instruction.
Gary Drescher
Milwaukee, Wisconsin, US
