Early last summer I was on a five-mile hike in Yosemite National Park. The trail was steep and rocky. About halfway through the hike, it felt as if I’d pulled or overextended some muscle in my ankle. My ankle began stiffening, and each step was more difficult and more painful than the last.
I began praying because I have found through experience that prayer heals physical—and other—troubles quickly and effectively. My thought turned to “the two cardinal points” of Christian Science. In Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, describes these as “the nothingness of material life and intelligence and the mighty actuality of all-inclusive God, good” (p. 52).
If matter is nothing, I reasoned, then the structure, strength, agility, and other qualities that brought me to this point on the hike and will take me the rest of the way are not matter-based. I realized that it wasn’t necessary to repair or change matter—that my movement was a result of God’s action, not the action of a personal material body.
