Our daughter was at one of her high school color guard team practices. The rest of the family was headed off to another activity. But I had felt led that evening to stay home and pray for church. While this direction seemed a bit puzzling, I was obedient.
As I prayed, I was giving thought to the work we are to be doing as church members. In a message to the church at Ephesus in the book of Revelation, John admonishes this church for leaving their “first love” (see Revelation 2:1–7). Their city was plagued by belief in and application of the so-called powers of magical arts (see Mary Baker Eddy, Message to The Mother Church for 1900, p. 12). The Ephesian church had left their first love—their trust in and loyalty and obedience to God, and their consequent commitment to proving their faith through healing—and so their “works” were grounded in mystery instead of in rightly directed reason. Mary Baker Eddy refers to this kind of reasoning in her book, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures: “Reason, rightly directed, serves to correct the errors of corporeal sense; but sin, sickness, and death will seem real (even as the experiences of the sleeping dream seem real) until the Science of man’s eternal harmony breaks their illusion with the unbroken reality of scientific being” (p. 494).
I considered Jesus’ example, how healing was always at the center of his activity.
While thinking about the work that I was doing as an individual, as a parent and spouse and as a church member, I considered Jesus’ example, how healing was always at the center of his activity. I saw that I had an opportunity to improve my work, to keep my first love, God, at the forefront of thought and to demonstrate my love through the work of healing through prayer based on spiritual understanding.
I then turned to the definition of Church in Science and Health, which reads: “The structure of Truth and Love; whatever rests upon and proceeds from divine Principle.
“The Church is that institution, which affords proof of its utility and is found elevating the race, rousing the dormant understanding from material beliefs to the apprehension of spiritual ideas and the demonstration of divine Science, thereby casting out devils, or error, and healing the sick” (p. 583).
I pondered the phrase “affords proof of its utility.” I understood that God is All, that Life, Truth, and Love constitute His being, and that, in reality, I reflect Him in all the work I do. I could see clearly that my role in Church is to be a healer, to play a part in proving the Church’s utility. After all, the real work of Church is to demonstrate our understanding of God, and of man in God’s image.
When our daughter returned home from practice later that evening, she told me she was having trouble walking. She felt something was out of place with her hip but couldn’t understand what might have caused it. We shared some spiritual truths, and she knew I would be praying for her. While she cleaned up from practice, I turned to God. I felt I was being given an opportunity to reason rightly and prove that Church affords proof of its utility. Immediately this Bible verse came to thought: “In him we live, and move, and have our being” (Acts 17:28). I felt a sense of calm come over my thought and recognized that all of our daughter’s actions before, during, and after practice could only have been guided and directed by divine Love.
I then looked to see where Mrs. Eddy had quoted that verse from Acts in her writings. Her first reference to it in Science and Health comes at the end of the following passage: “The spiritual fact, repeated in the action of man and the whole universe, is harmonious and is the ideal of Truth. Spiritual facts are not inverted; the opposite discord, which bears no resemblance to spirituality, is not real. The only evidence of this inversion is obtained from suppositional error, which affords no proof of God, Spirit, or of the spiritual creation.…
“The Scriptures say, ‘In Him we live, and move, and have our being’ ” (pp. 207–208).
I thought about the fact that “suppositional error … affords no proof of God.” There was the connection to the work I had been doing regarding Church. While error, the opposite of Truth, “affords no proof of God,” Church, “the structure of Truth and Love,” does afford proof of God—through healing. I now understood why I had needed to be home: to see Church in action. I continued praying for our daughter, affirming the truth of her God-given spiritual nature and acknowledging that she dwells only in Truth and Love. The next morning she said there was only a slight hint of the problem from the previous evening, and by midday she was completely free.
Christ Jesus, and Mary Baker Eddy also, selflessly kept their first love, their commitment to God and Christian healing, so that we could learn how to do the same. They each established and forwarded a mission of healing, resulting in a Church that affords proof of its utility. Today we’re given the blessed opportunity to be a part of this Church and honor God as our first love, proving our faith through healing.
