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Once while getting ready to attend a members’ meeting in my branch church, I heard a grumpy thought in my head that said, “Being a church member is no picnic!” Not a particularly healing or constructive observation, I quickly realized, so I took a moment to reconsider my understanding of and feeling for Church, which Mary Baker Eddy defined in part as “the structure of Truth and Love” ( Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 583 ).

I grew up an avid reader in a family of book lovers. From an early age, I treasured reading the Christian Science Bible Lessons, chapters of the Bible, and Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy.

Not long after I went into the public practice of Christian Science, I got a call from a woman who had experienced immediate relief when she had asked me to pray for her the day before. She was so pleased that she now wanted me to treat a list of long-standing ailments.

You may have seen a comic strip or a movie where a hasty individual walks into a pole or hits a glass door. In one of Marcel Pagnol’s movies (a famous French writer and filmmaker), someone kicks a hat, but underneath it some naughty pranksters have hidden a brick.

Jesus promised that those who would follow his teachings would perform the same and even greater healing works than those that he did (see John 14:12 ). This promise is as true now as it was in Jesus’ time and applies to healing the different types of diseases facing humanity today.

In today’s world, many feel challenged by a wide range of demands placed on them—family, work, school, finances, etc. No wonder we hear the phrase “stressed out” so often.

Rather than being overcome by an almost incessant clamor of malice and immorality in the world around us, is it possible to see things more deeply and spiritually, beholding plainly and in a healing way the omnipotent power of God and our own dominion as reflections of Him? When a person turns for help to the dual pastor of Christian Science—the Bible and Mary Baker Eddy’s Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures —and begins a deeper study of these books’ profound ideas about the wonder and allness of God, he or she soon naturally starts to understand that death, sin, and sickness aren’t authentic as they appear to be. Often it’s not long before one becomes overjoyed by the dawning truth that, in the light of God’s encompassing allness, evil isn’t a real thing at all; it’s a term for absolutely nothing.

There is a story in the seventh chapter of the Gospel of Luke, which I have found very helpful while praying about my work as a Christian Science nurse. The story takes place at the house of Simon the Pharisee, where he had invited Christ Jesus to eat with him (see Luke 7:36–50 ).

One of my first lessons in really thinking about the concept of church occurred when I was taking an introductory class in architecture in college.   We were asked to make a model of a church out of sugar cubes.

An illness before a planned trip prompts a healing journey into the pages of the Bible.