“This is dull.” Honestly, that was my response when I left the Christian Science Sunday School at the age of twenty and started to attend the Sunday services at my branch church. The first few weeks, I turned up at the services with great reluctance. And I wasn’t inspired. I didn’t understand what I would gain from hearing the Bible Lesson read aloud in church when I had already studied the Lesson on my own all week. Before long, I was asked to teach Sunday School. But after a few years it was time to go back to church again.
Church services are alive and active as we listen to what God has to say to each of us.
This time, I didn’t want to feel the same lack of inspiration. I remembered that I had often heard people say that the church service was “a healing service.” I later found out that, according to an article in the Christian Science Sentinel, Mary Baker Eddy had “once said to a student that she longed for the day to come when no one could enter a Christian Science church, no matter how sick or how sorrowing that one might be, without being healed …” (Florence Clerihew Boyd, “Healing the multitudes,” July 1, 1916). As I started to pray about how church could be more fulfilling, Mrs. Eddy’s remark became much more significant.
