Articles

June 6, 2000 Dear Fellow Member, Greetings, gratitude, and love to you from The Christian Science Board of Directors and from all who gathered here at The Mother Church for our Annual Meeting. We are writing to you, and to all members worldwide, to share some important information that was given during yesterday's meeting.

To give truly effective spiritual treatment through prayer, treatment that heals, is the concern of many people. How might we do it, and do it better? The most potent treatment doesn't start out assuming that a particular worrying condition is solid reality to be somehow pushed aside, despite a perhaps persistent appearance.

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Millions Of People have lost faith in what they used to believe in. This has brought a great moral crisis in our society.

When I was ten years old my Sunday School teacher taught our class how we could pray if we hurt ourselves—if we scraped our knees roller-skating, for instance. She taught us to immediately deny that accidents can occur in God's kingdom; next, to replace the claim of accident with the truth that only harmony is real; and, finally, to rely wholeheartedly on God's power to enforce that truth.

I've been asked many times why I use prayer to gain relief from physical ailments or to overcome stress or some other challenge in my life. Sometimes when this question comes up, I find that people want to know about the "what ifs" as well.

Recently when I was rereading the story of Joseph in the Bible, one sentence stopped me short: "Now there arose up a new king over Egypt, which knew not Joseph. "   Ex.

On a shelf in an attic, a leather-bound book had been collecting dust for over a decade. A young man found it at a time he desperately needed it.

What does it take to heal? Questions like this, coming from a public faced with diverse views on spiritual healing, promoted in founding of this magazine over a century ago. In an editorial in the first issue, its founder emphasizes that Christly qualities heal: "Great charity and humility is necessary in this work of healing.

The Statement of Mission and Purpose of The Mother Church includes this objective: Expanded availability and accessibility of Science and Health with key to the Scriptures. The reports from the Field at this year's Annual Meeting show the wide-ranging impact of that effort.