Articles

"This was the most important meeting for me in 85 years. " "I've been a Mother Church member for 40 years and I've never been treated with such respect and been taken as a mature Christian Scientist that can be trusted.

THE TEARS WELLED UP IN MY EYES as I slowly pulled my car to the side of the road. I was lost in an unfamiliar city and frustrated over navigating professional responsibilities that were foreign to my convictions.

MY INTRODUCTION TO CHRISTIAN SCIENCE came about this way: My husband and I had both gone to a Sunday School as children, and had been churchgoers as teenagers, but as soon as we became adults we stopped attending church. We preferred to sleep in and then have brunch late Sunday mornings.

In these pages we've gathered several shorter items — articles of less than a page in length and excerpts from longer manuscripts that offer useful, inspiring insights. We hope you enjoy this kind of short-form nourishment in each issue.

THOSE WORDS WERE SPOKEN by a head usher at The Mother Church, after each usher's meeting twice weekly. There were healings at The Mother Church services, of course, but as a new member of the usher staff, I had not seen any, and muttered about it too often.

" AND JESUS WENT ABOUT all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues, and preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing every sickness and every disease among the people" ( Matt. 9:35 ).

DURING THE PAST WEEKS, MONTHS, AND YEARS, I've been thinking about Jesus' command, "Get thee hence, Satan" ( Matt. 4:10 ).

IN CHRISTIAN SCIENCE I'M DELIGHTED TO HAVE a religious practice that steadily nudges me to grow and develop spiritually. A way of thinking and living that increasingly proves to me the truth of its fundamental theology: that because God is absolutely good and has created everyone and everything in His own perfect likeness, evil—however realistic it seems to be—is no part of God's creation nor a reality of anyone's experience.

IS CHRISTIAN SCIENCE SOMETHING THAT CAN BE SPOILED by less than perfect people and the complex pressures of changing times? The truth is that however badly something seems to have sidetracked someone's intuition of good or interfered with the desire to follow Christian Science, neither God nor man, who is the creation of God, have been compromised. They're always there to be found.

THE OTHER DAY, A FRIEND TOLD ME she sometimes finds herself feeling critical of a fellow church member whom she actually admires in many ways. She said these thoughts disturb her, but she has been unable to get rid of them.