Articles

At the back of this magazine there is a directory of practitioners engaged in the public healing ministry of Christian Science. We thought it might be helpful to Journal readers, and especially to those who are considering fuller engagement in Christian Science healing, to hear some of these practitioners share a few thoughts about how they got started in the full-time practice.

It was an early December day in 1968. There was no snow.

The Christmas season. Whatever your view of it—whether you anticipate it with great delight, or perhaps with some sense of dread, or with a combination of these (as many people do)—you may be searching for a way to make this season's activity more truly satisfying for yourself and others.

In the United States, several symposiums on the relationship of prayer and healing have heightened people's curiosity about Christian Science. Senior officials of the Church of Christ, Scientist, have given many talks on the subject, and Christian Science practitioners and lecturers have received numerous invitations from colleges and universities to explain the Church's mission to "reinstate primitive Christianity and its lost element of healing.

What a delight! The testimony I'd read in the Christian Science Sentinel had been written by a boy I knew. In fact, I'd been his very first Sunday School teacher.

When a contribution is made to the Restoration and Renewal Fund, what is the actual gift? Is it the cash or securities, or the real estate? Or do these merely represent the gift? Isn't the real gift the thought and motive that impel the act of giving? Contributors often communicate with us about the motives behind their gifts and donations. These include a renewed love for the universal mission of the Church of Christ, Scientist, a deep gratitude for personal blessings received (the foremost being spiritual healing), and a joyful sense of duty to help provide capital improvements to the facilities at The Mother Church.

• Immediately after a lecture on Science and Health, a woman comes up to the lecturer, takes Science and Health out of her hand, and gives her $20, saying, "I need this book. " • After hearing a lecture, a man living on disability payments who had been praying to know how to be healed, buys Science and Health.

At a two-day conference of the American Society of Law, Medicine, and Ethics (ASLME) in Boston last year, physicians and lawyers, along with some parents and teachers, examined the relationship between doctor and family in making health care decisions for children. It was the first time the Church of Christ, Scientist, had been invited to participate in an ASLME conference.

Have you ever tried to pray using passages or ideas from the Bible, or tried to study Science and Health, while struggling with the suggestion that these are "just words" devoid of peace, love, hope, or power? Then read on. Certainly there can be such a thing as empty words.

This is an article that I never thought I would be writing. I have read many articles and testimonies in the Christian Science periodicals about the healing of grief, and I saw my mother healed of grieving in a few hours, after the unexpected passing of my father.