The Journal is pleased to offer readers the second in an occasional column from the Office of Christian Science Practitioner Activities at The Mother Church in Boston. “Pathways to the practice” is autobiographical. While the contributors, presented here as two anonymous authors, are now experienced Christian Science practitioners, they were not yet listed in the directories of the Journal or The Christian Science Herald when they humbly accepted their first requests for Christian Science treatment—and got right to work! Below, in their own words, these 21st-century healers trace the heart’s and mind’s response to Christ Jesus’ unambiguous call: “Heal the sick.” It is our hope that readers will be encouraged, step by step, to renew their own commitment to scientific Christian healing in the 21st century, and to share this priceless gift of God’s grace with all humanity.
Author 1: I was raised in a faith tradition where God was to be loved, worshiped, thanked, feared, and obeyed. My early religious influences were lovely, devout, sincere people. But any talk of God’s love seldom went beyond Jesus’ death on the cross. I was taught that God’s love could be stripped away from us at any moment for the slightest transgression and that God loves only some people. Accordingly, I felt alienated from God, and for a time I doubted His wisdom in creating a sinful, unlovable universe, and I even doubted His presence.
As I began to feel and tangibly experience God’s love, the desire to share it grew.
When I began to study Christian Science and learned that God is Love itself, and that the true, spiritual man is the offspring of God, I wanted to know more. As I’ve come to know God as the intelligent, loving Principle of all that really is, I’ve seen and felt that love that I was so longing to feel, and I’ve felt closer to God.
The Bible tells us: “Draw nigh to God, and he will draw nigh to you” (James 4:8). And Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy says: “Love for God and man is the true incentive in both healing and teaching” (p. 454). That word incentive stuck out to me in a new way recently. When we think of an incentive, it is a motivating factor, a reward. As we “draw nigh to God” in helping and healing mankind, we become more receptive to and more aware of His love, and in turn, we love Him and mankind more. It forms a cycle. Or, as Mrs. Eddy discovered and shared with us as the spiritual sense of a line in the Lord’s Prayer: “And Love is reflected in love” (Science and Health, p. 17).
I once heard a Christian Science lecturer say something to the effect that love is like five loaves and two fishes—it might seem like too little until you start giving it away. And so, as I began to feel and tangibly experience God’s love, the desire to share it grew. First, I served my branch Church of Christ, Scientist, by trimming bushes and cutting grass. Then I became a church member. Then I served as a Reader, and later I served on the board, and I continued to serve in many other ways. Each of these expressions of love resulted in understanding God more and in experiencing more love. So now I share this love with others in the full-time practice of Christian Science healing.
Before taking this step, there were many challenges to overcome—seeming lack of time, money, and understanding, as well as feelings of unworthiness. New challenges seemed to emerge every day. But I handled each one by recognizing it as a false belief that had no basis, no reality in God, divine Love, who supplies us with abundant love as we share it with others. One by one, each challenge fell to the wayside.
As each imposition appeared and disappeared, I thought of the words of a practitioner who spoke at the Annual Meeting of the members of The Mother Church one year and asked, “What are you waiting for?”
Since entering the full-time practice of Christian Science, I’ve experienced fuller and faster spiritual growth than I’ve ever known. New opportunities to love and to serve appear all the time, and as God, Principle, guides, I follow.
Challenges become less impressive as Love lifts our thoughts to the mountaintop, where we see them disappear. And as our “love for God and man” grows, we progress. As Science and Health says, “. . . progress is the law of God, whose law demands of us only what we can certainly fulfil” (p. 233).
So, to anyone wanting to feel closer to God and man, more loved and more loving, I say: What are you waiting for?
