One day, while walking our dog down an icy driveway, I slipped and fell. As I lay there, I thought about the experience of Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science and author of Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures. She had slipped and fallen on a patch of ice too, but her injuries were considered fatal—she wasn’t expected to live.
Instead of this being the end of her life, though, it was a remarkable turning point. She ended up experiencing a complete healing. While reading the Bible, she received a breakthrough spiritual revelation from an account of one of the healings Jesus performed. Her healing served as a catalyst for the fulfillment of a divine purpose: to share with humanity the path to healing and salvation through Christ, Truth.
As I got back up to go inside, I noticed a sharp pain in my shoulder. I began to pray, but I found myself struggling with the thought that healing the body through Christian Science is a mystery and much more complicated than solving other problems, like finding the right job or financial supply. While I didn’t realize it at the time, my first efforts to pray were more or less starting from the mistaken standpoint that I was material and needed Spirit to heal my material body.
After praying and studying on my own for several weeks—and still no relief from the pain—I reached out to an experienced Christian Science practitioner for help. We worked with the idea that there is only one version of man, which is entirely spiritual. The practitioner shared a Bible verse that really struck me: “What? know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own?” (I Corinthians 6:19). “Ye are not your own” jumped out at me. Wow! If I am not my own, then whose am I? Who possesses me and my being? I reasoned that it must be God. The divine fact that God is Life is not up for argument here, I thought.
I continued to pray with these ideas, and I also studied the chapter “Christian Science Practice” in Science and Health. Then, one morning, I awoke with a deep sense of gratitude for the healing power of Christian Science and for Mrs. Eddy. I thought about the grace and pure unselfishness she expressed in writing down for all mankind the healing law of Love. At the time, I was reading a book about her life, and I opened it to this statement that she made: “As Mary Baker Eddy, I am the weakest of mortals, but as the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, I am the bone and sinew of the world” (Yvonne Caché von Fettweis and Robert Townsend Warneck, Mary Baker Eddy: Christian Healer, Amplified Edition, p. 184).
Reading this brought tears of joy to my eyes, along with a feeling of comfort, like being wrapped in a blanket of Mother-love. It was exactly what I needed to hear and feel in that moment. A few days later, as I was going about my daily routine of walking my dog, I realized I hadn’t been experiencing any pain. It had disappeared completely, and I couldn’t even recall exactly when it left; the pain was simply gone. To me, this confirmed the fact that it never had any real existence. It had never been a part of my spiritual being in the first place.
I am very grateful to God for this healing and to Mrs. Eddy for discovering the healing power of God and giving us Science and Health, which unlocks the spiritual sense of the Bible. There is no place on this earth where Love’s healing power isn’t present and available to all!
Lindsey Roder
