Daughter’s eye quickly healed

Only one more day before the start of school! The children were so looking forward to it, especially our youngest, who was starting kindergarten and excited to get to join her older brother and sister in being at school all day long. We had saved this day as a fun “getting all the last-minute things for school” day, and all of us were anticipating a great time together.  

But after my husband left for work, our kindergartner came into our room in tears telling me that her eye was hurting. The eye was swollen and red, but our family knew from experience that Christian Science is an effective approach to healing. So I held and comforted my daughter for a while, assuring her that God, her Father-Mother, would not allow something to take away her joy and freedom or to keep her from growing and learning.

She calmed down, and we were able to say “the scientific statement of being” together from Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy (p. 468). It starts with the radical statement, “There is no life, truth, intelligence, nor substance in matter.” This assured us that what the material picture presented to us was not true. Because God, divine Spirit, is All and the spiritual Parent of each of us, we are not made up of matter. Matter has no substance to it, no life to call its own, and no intelligence to tell us what we are.

The statement then goes on with this affirmation: “All is infinite Mind and its infinite manifestation, for God is All-in-all.” On this basis, I realized, there was no room for error or any belief of disease for any of God’s sons and daughters, including this dear one, because the spiritual reality is the All-in-all of God, good.

The children and I all cuddled up together and read the Bible Lesson for that week from the Christian Science Quarterly, which brought peace, joy, and a sense that only good was in store.

I continued praying while the children got dressed and ready for the day. I picked up Science and Health and turned to God, quietly asking what I needed to know, what I needed to understand more clearly. I opened to this passage: “Evil thoughts, lusts, and malicious purposes cannot go forth, like wandering pollen, from one human mind to another, finding unsuspected lodgment, if virtue and truth build a strong defence” (pp. 234–235). At first I wondered what this had to do with our daughter! But it felt as though I had been led to that passage, and I knew I needed to trust God’s direction, so I decided to look more closely at the statement.

I realized that it certainly was an “evil thought”—not based in the law of God, good—that progress and joy could be interrupted; and I saw that to believe that any of God’s children could be injured or kept away from good would be to attribute power, malicious or otherwise, to the flesh. While the problem had seemed to come out of nowhere, it was clear to me that we have a “strong defence” through “virtue and truth.”

I struggled over this for a bit. My daughter seemed so small and defenseless, just this little slip of a thing, so I asked our Father-Mother God how I could instill in her this virtue and truth. The answer came almost instantly: “You don’t have to. I already have!”

Then it hit me: As much as I knew her true, spiritual identity was God’s child, made in the image and likeness of her Father-Mother, I was still holding on to the limited concept of her as merely a human little girl. I knew I had to strive to truly see her, as well as her brother and sister, as the perfect, complete, whole, and free idea of God, already including all virtue and truth. The Christ, Truth—God’s message of love—comes to everyone, showing us our true relation to God as His spiritual reflection. This means that our defense against illness or injury is our divine heritage. I just needed to recognize and more deeply understand this fact. 

I felt a clear sense that the healing was complete, and I gave thanks to God for His direction and inspiration, and for the healing presence of the Christ. And indeed, the symptoms disappeared entirely that same day, and there were three happy children, all with bright and sparkling clear eyes, ready to head off to school the next morning.

Sheila Alioto
Wildwood, Missouri, US