It is with deep gratitude to God and for learning to pray the way it is taught in Christian Science that I offer this testimony.
A number of years ago, our brother left home to go and learn a trade from our uncle in a foreign country. At one point while abroad, he traveled alone into another province. Our family didn’t hear from him for a long time. All the means at our disposal were used to find him, but in vain.
My mom suggested we could pray for our brother. My siblings and I had learned in the Christian Science Sunday School that God is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent. We also knew that God is Love, and that we are all created in His spiritual image. This reassured us that our brother could in no way be separated from God, Love. He could never, under any circumstance, find himself in a situation where God’s love would not be able to come to his aid.
These spiritual facts were especially comforting because during certain periods we heard news about killings and ill-treatment of foreigners living in the region where we thought our brother probably was. This information terrified our family. We turned to certain familiar passages from the Bible, especially the twenty-third and ninety-first Psalms.
Those passages reminded us of God’s saving love, present everywhere and in all circumstances. The Lord, our Shepherd, was holding our brother’s life, and the life of every child of God, safe. God’s love is capable of protecting us from every sort of danger. We took spiritual refuge in what Mary Baker Eddy writes in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures: “Divine Love always has met and always will meet every human need” (p. 494).
The Lord, our Shepherd, was holding our brother’s life, and the life of every child of God, safe.
Thanks to all these spiritual truths, we remained expectant of our brother’s return, even as several years elapsed. Every day that passed, we cherished the idea that our brother—as is the case for every child of God—truly existed in divine Mind, Love, where all is at peace and safe. This wonderful hymn from the Christian Science Hymnal sums up how prayer helped our family’s mental atmosphere during this challenging time:
One thought I have, my ample creed,
So deep it is and broad,
And equal to my every need,—
It is the thought of God.
Each morn unfolds His blessings new,
I take in trust my road;
And rising freshly to my view,
Shines forth the thought of God.
To this their secret strength they owed,
The martyr’s path who trod;
The fountains of their patience flowed
From out their thought of God.
Be still the light upon my way,
My pilgrim staff and rod,
My rest by night, my strength by day,
O blessed thought of God.
(Frederick L. Hosmer, No. 260 ,
adapt. © CSBD)
And then, one day, our brother came back. It was a special moment in the history of our family. Truly, words weren’t enough to thank God. It was a time of celebration.
Our brother told us that during his sojourn abroad he had encountered many problems, which had ultimately been resolved. At one point he had been arrested on false charges and put in prison without any legal process or trial. He hadn’t known how to get out of there, and no one in the family knew where he was. One morning, the prison warden told him that he was free to go. He was told that a military officer had come to the prison and asked for our brother’s release. This officer never contacted him, nor did he leave any contact information.
Our brother told us the story in gratitude to God because he, like us, was convinced that God had helped him get out of that prison and helped him to return home, safe and sound.
