Painful Leg Healed Through Spiritual Insight
After several days of unusually strenuous activities, one of my legs became painful. Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy (p. 123) refers to the “Ptolemaic blunder”.
Ptolemy forwarded the theory that the sun revolves around the earth because, to physical sense, the sun rises and sets and the earth appears to stand still. Copernicus came along and, not bowing to the material vision, did scientific calculations and discovered that the earth revolves around the sun. Just so, Mary Baker Eddy brought us the Science of Mind-healing—that man is tributary to Mind, God, which contradicts the conventional thought that matter is the center and substance of our being.
I realized that I had fallen for the “Ptolemaic blunder”—I was allowing aching matter to be the center of my universe instead of Mind. God, Mind, is the axis of my day, my activities, my thinking, and my life. My being revolves around Mind. The Bible constantly instructs us to keep God as the center of our lives, as in: “Look unto me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth: for I am God, and there is none else.” (Isaiah 45:22)
“As astronomy reverses the human perception of the movement of the solar system, so Christian Science reverses the seeming relation of Soul and body and makes body tributary to Mind." (Science and Health, p. 119)
“…human belief is a…mortal, finite sense of things, which immortal Spirit silences forever.” (Science and Health, p. 124) Think of it! Spirit silences human belief forever! And that is what happened to me. I was healed.
LE
Starting the Day Right Brings Blessings
Not too long ago, I woke up already filled with apprehension and fear about the demands of my day. There seemed so much to do and each heavy task had to be completed in a particular sequence. There simply wasn’t enough time to do it all. Then I stopped myself in mid-thought.
I asked myself, “Did Jesus begin his day this way?” Did he think, “I have to heal many, many people today, I may have to raise someone who is dead, I have to keep teaching the disciples so they can carry on after me, I have to talk with the people who are following me and tell them simple stories that they can remember, I have to refute the Pharisees and scribes, I might have to quiet a raging storm, and there is so little time?”
I couldn’t believe for a moment that Jesus ever felt this way. He was so attuned to his heavenly Father that his day unfolded naturally and beautifully. He “went about doing good.” (Acts 10:38) Constantly. Without fatigue. Without hurry. With infinite patience. His was the example that I needed to follow.
Mary Baker Eddy, in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, explains it this way on page 26: “The Christ was the Spirit which Jesus implied in his own statements: ’I am the way, the truth, and the life;’ ’I and my Father are one.’ This Christ, or divinity of the man Jesus was his divine nature, the godliness which animated him. Divine Truth, Life, and Love gave Jesus authority over sin, sickness, and death. His mission was to reveal the Science of celestial being, to prove what God is and what He does for man.”
We are supposed to be followers of Christ Jesus. So my day, which of course paled next to Jesus’ day, should also be without fatigue, without hurry, with infinite patience.
I sat quietly and then began my day over again, this time starting with affirmations of God’s government and God’s purpose. The day was a wonderful one. It was quite different from what I feared and it proved to be productive and enjoyable. I even had some extra prayer-time that I hadn’t expected.
When we prayerfully turn to God for guidance, He does fill each day with good accomplishments.
Celia Nygard