I am so grateful to be able to send along news of healing. For more than a year, I had a spot on my forehead that was sometimes slightly painful.
I often prayed with two passages from the book of Job in the Bible: “If thou prepare thine heart, and stretch out thine hands toward him; if iniquity be in thine hand, put it far away, and let not wickedness dwell in thy tabernacles. For then shalt thou lift up thy face without spot; yea, thou shalt be stedfast, and shalt not fear: because thou shalt forget thy misery, and remember it as waters that pass away” (11:13–16). And: “If there be a messenger with him, an interpreter, one among a thousand, to shew unto man his uprightness: then he is gracious unto him, and saith, Deliver him from going down to the pit: I have found a ransom. His flesh shall be fresher than a child’s: he shall return to the days of his youth” (33:23–25).
Both of these passages gave me great hope that this problem could be healed through prayer. In praying with them, I wanted to understand more fully what preparing my heart and stretching out my hands toward God really meant in my daily life.
I was serving as First Reader at my Christian Science branch church during this time, and this provided wonderful opportunities to prepare readings from the Bible and Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy for the church’s Wednesday testimony meetings. Times of study and research felt like true preparation of the heart to hear God’s messages for me and for the congregation. And times of prayer and declaring God’s perfection and my perfection as His child were expressions of stretching out my hands to God.
After some months of study and prayer, there seemed to be little change to the physical problem. One day I decided that I would no longer give the spot any attention—no checking on it, no washing carefully. I would instead give my full attention to God and trust that whatever I needed to know would come through prayer.
A few days later, as I was researching articles on JSH-Online.com to support my Wednesday readings, I came across one entitled “Your body and your church” (Nathan A. Talbot, Journal, September 1992). The author states, “The Science of Christianity is not calling on us to ignore the body, but is challenging us to consider it from an entirely different perspective.” And the article encourages readers to consider more deeply what it means to be “the temple of God” (I Corinthians 3:16).
I read the article many times over the next couple of days. I was gaining a truer sense of the body as a spiritual idea, a sanctuary rather than a burden. What a revelation!
The next time I noticed my forehead as I washed my face, it was completely clear—no evidence of a spot. It has been over a year since this healing took place.
I am so grateful for our Leader’s spiritual sense of the Scriptures as a healing power in our lives, and for the treasure trove of healing ideas found in the Christian Science periodicals. I am in awe of the ways that our movement is staying “abreast of the times,” as Mrs. Eddy directed regarding the periodicals (Manual of The Mother Church, p. 44). Over 140 years of articles and testimonies, as well as podcasts and lectures available online, are a tremendous spiritual support to the individual seeker of Truth and to our movement around the world.
Sharon Vincz Andrews
Bloomington, Indiana, US
