Articles

I recently completed a three-year term as First Reader at my branch Church of Christ, Scientist. The First Reader conducts the main part of the Sunday service each week as well as the Wednesday evening testimony meetings.

With the various challenges and boasts of materialism that are presented to us daily via the media, in literature, perhaps from people in our lives, many Christian Scientists may have been asked to sincerely consider the question, “Why exactly are you a Christian Scientist?” or “How can you be a Christian Scientist?”—i. e.

The Christian Science spiritual method of caring for difficulties differs from all material methods. One of the most significant differences is that as we go about our work of solving a problem through prayer, in our hearts we know the problem is already solved because it’s unknown to God and therefore has no actual reality.

When confronted with evil in any of its apparent forms—disease, violence, pain, loss—we don’t ever need to feel that we’re on the defensive. That’s because Christian Science helps us understand that evil never has power or activity or momentum.

I was bedridden and was seeking healing through prayer, which I had found to be reliable and effective. I considered the possibility of calling a Christian Science nurse for assistance in addition to the metaphysical treatment I was having from a Christian Science practitioner.

I was at the 2013 Boston Marathon when it was brutally interrupted by two successive explosions. As smoke and screams of terror clouded the scene, my heart sank with fear, but in that very instant the words of a beloved psalm poured into my thought and brought me a sense of calm and comfort.

What can you do when a group of people you value split into opposing factions and refuse to cooperate with each other? It happens frequently. Political parties polarize and refuse to work out their differences while the greater good of their constituency suffers.

During my years of study of the Bible, the word immediately has often leaped off the pages of the New Testament’s accounts of Christ Jesus’ healing work. When this word is used in relation to the Master’s healing work, it is referring to the quickness of the effect of Christ-healing on the individuals Jesus healed.

Have you ever heard the phrase “Don’t let anyone get your goat” and wondered what it meant? One theory about its origin says it comes from the use of goats as companions for racehorses so they can be calm and focused. If someone removes a horse’s goat, the horse can become unsettled and agitated, hurting his race.

A friend of mine told me, after a church service, that he had formerly been a member of a branch Church of Christ, Scientist, in the Midwest. Everyone there knew of a woman who had come to a service painfully lame, leaning on a cane, and left the service completely well.