Q: I love Christian Science and love the idea of praying for other people. What is holding me back, though, is that I just don't think that I will know the right words to say to patients. How important are the specific words that I tell someone?
A: While a Christian Scientist's tender love for a patient may be shown in a verbal expression of encouraging ideas, it's not really the words themselves that cure. It's the Christly messages bestowed by God on practitioner and patient that truly bring comfort. The Christ is the springboard to transforming thought, which thereby heals. I've sometimes found it helpful to think of the Christ as God's voice. "Christ is the true idea voicing good, the divine message from God to men speaking to the human consciousness," explained Mary Baker Eddy in Science and Health (p. 332).
It's "the divine message," that gives the public practice of Christian Science its substance and foundation. I've never once talked anyone into a healing. In case after case, I have found that effective prayer doesn't actually happen until I'm quiet and listen to God speak and lead me toward what to think about the patient.
When I was first in the public practice—I don't think I was yet advertising in the Journal—one day a very pleasant person asked me to pray for her. While she was describing her illness in careful detail, I became quietly inspired by something I heard God say in my heart in regard to her. When she was finished, I explained exactly what I'd heard God say to me. "Well, all right," she responded, without much hope in her voice.
The following day, she again asked for help, saying that she wasn't better. I took additional care to explain once more that same metaphysical point that I knew was key to bringing resolution to this case. The day after, she told me that she was worse. This time, in anticipation of her call, I had prepared exactly what I was going to tell her. I laid out, using colorful examples and vivid illustrations, the inspiring idea that could help her. The next day she informed me that she was finished working with me.
I ran into her a few weeks later, though, and she was exuberant! She exclaimed, "I've just been healed," and then went on to describe an amazing epiphany she'd had—an idea that had come to her, which happened to be exactly the point I'd been trying to make to her all along. Of course, I didn't say, "I told you so." I just rejoiced with her. She hadn't heard me when I'd carefully explained that concept—she seemed oblivious to it, in fact—yet, the Christly idea she needed had permeated through and eliminated her fears nevertheless.
Humbled, I realized that it was my prayer, not some vibrant words, that she really had been after. Initially the spiritual essence of what I'd shared with her had gotten a little lost in the words. The deep feeling of God's power underlying an inspired idea is the crux of prayer. "The effects of Christian Science are not so much seen as felt," states Science and Health. "It is the 'still, small voice' of Truth uttering itself. We are either turning away from this utterance, or we are listening to it and going up higher" (p. 323).
Suppose you were in a cold room with some other people. You could, if you wanted, walk over to the fireplace and start a fire. You'd get warm, but so would everyone else in the room. Prayer works the same way. When Christly inspiration warms you, everyone in your world feels it, too.
If you were to walk around the cold room, however, and just say to people, "Fires are warm. You know, fires are warm," no one would feel any heat. It wouldn't matter if you stomped your foot and declared in your loudest voice to everyone that fires are warm! Only a genuine burning fire could heat things up.
When praying, healing warmth comes through the inspiration of the Christ. Inspiration is wisdom's answer to our request, "Shepherd, show me how to go" (Mary Baker Eddy, Christian Science Hymnal, No. 304). We feel love in our hearts along with each specific, inspired concept God blesses us with. We are shown a new view of our own and others' true, perfect spiritual selves when we're quietly receptive and listen for God's answer to our request for help.
I've discovered that listening, but failing to act on what God tells me, isn't prayer, even slightly. It's hearing and following divine inspiration that makes a Christian. I've never been able to transcend fears, and the illusions of mortality that go with them, seen as disease, limitation, sin, and death, without making a point to act on what I've heard God say. We may echo the truth verbally right and left. Yet, we aren't truly praying until Christly inspiration gains a place in our thought and we allow it to transform permanently our perspectives and actions.
Yes, it certainly is good to encourage and cheer on your fellow men and women, but plain old talk won't free a person of disease any more than humanly spoken words could melt a glacier. Christian Science isn't a talking cure; the power and communications of God alone are what heal. Seeing that has been a great help in keeping me from being tempted to substitute mere winning words for something as wonderful as what may be heard in God's voice. "The heathen raged, the kingdoms were moved: he uttered his voice, the earth melted" (Ps. 46:6).
ALBUQUERQUE, NEW MEXICO, US
