ALL LAST SUMMER I had been so looking forward to spending my Labor Day weekend (September 2–3) at my old summer camp in Missouri, the site of the first Spiritual Activism Summit hosted by TMC Youth. However, on the morning I was to get on the plane to fly out there, I woke up and looked in the bathroom mirror. My left eye was swollen to the point that I couldn’t open it all the way. It looked quite awful. This had never happened before, and I was immediately struck with fear. One of the thoughts that ran through my mind was that I may have had an allergic reaction to something. Over the previous three years I had been working toward starting up a Christian Science Organization (CSO) on my college campus in California so students could get together and talk about God and spirituality and how to apply the ideas in Science and Health to life on campus. However, I had never quite been able to get more than one or two students together and never for consistent weekly meetings. It became mildly frustrating. I viewed the upcoming summit as a time to pray about the idea of a CSO and to hear about how others were using Christian Science to bless their college campuses. But that morning, my plans for a happy weekend at the Summit seemed to fade. Although just as quickly as the fear hit me about my eye, I felt a sense of indignation. Why should I have to deal with something like this, especially on the morning when I am headed off for a weekend of learning more about Christian Science and about my relationship with God?
I put my foot down then and there. There was no reason I had to put up with such an inconvenience that threatened to put a damper on my experience! I began to list all the spiritual truths that I knew about myself through my study of Christian Science—truths such as, I am the perfect child of God, made in God’s image and likeness. Consequently, nothing can hurt or hinder me. These truths also happened to be the opposite of what the image in the mirror was telling me. I continued to think along these lines, praying for myself by knowing that as the expression of God, I was created to be harmonious and beautiful and that nothing could get in the way of my expressing God’s perfection. Nothing could possibly attack my spiritual being, which is, as the Bible explains, “hid with Christ in God” (Col. 3:3). As God’s child, I could claim my right to be unmoved by any suggestion of sickness. I also prayed with this statement by Mrs. Eddy: “Good thoughts are an impervious armor; clad therewith you are completely shielded from the attacks of error of every sort” (The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany, p. 210). A sense of calm came over me once I realized that I was fully protected from any lie that could spoil my weekend. I was covered in the armor of good thoughts. Good thoughts always come from God, and when we let good thoughts into consciousness and act on them—for example, thoughts that are unselfish, honest, and forgiving—we have nothing to fear. Nothing can come between us and God.
Even so, I was tempted to look in the mirror to check on the progress of my eye. I was discouraged to find that it was still swollen. The thought then came to me to stop looking to the material body to show me the truth about my being. The physical, material picture was never the truth about me to begin with. I quit looking at my eye and continued mentally declaring that I was spiritual, affirming what I knew to be true about God and about me—God’s reflection. I felt the healing was already taking place in my thought, so the body had no choice but to respond to the spiritual treatment.
I got in the car with my mom, who drove me to the airport. She, too, is a Christian Scientist and I knew I could count on her to support my own prayers. I had been worried that she might notice my eye and express well-meaning motherly concern for me, so I had prayed to know that all that my mother could see about me was what was spiritually true. She and I drove to the airport, and although she never once said anything to me about my eye, I felt her support. I also prayed to know that I could trust that my prayerful treatment would be effective and that my looks wouldn’t attract unwanted attention in an airport filled with people. No one even seemed to notice. By the time I got off the plane an hour later for a short layover, the swelling had gone down completely, and I had full range of vision. There was not a trace of irritation or inflammation left.
I got to the Spiritual Activism Summit safely and had a wonderful weekend of spiritual growth without any further symptoms of irritation. While I was there, I attended an entire session all about CSO activity on campus and heard about what others were doing to bring Christian Science to their schools. It was so inspirational to see other students my age confidently bringing a Christlike perspective to their college lives. There was such a sense of community among us all that weekend that I continued to feel this spirit of fellowship after returning home at the end of the weekend.
At the Summit I also had the opportunity to meet two girls who were incoming freshmen to my school that September. We ended up starting an official CSO on our university campus a few weeks later and met regularly to talk about Christian Science, attend church together, chat about what’s going on in our lives and how we’re using what we’ve learned in church to handle it all. It really proved to me that when you put God first in your life and trust God for healing, you see healing not just of physical problems, but in other areas of your life as well. Things just fall into place naturally.
Allison Knight graduated this year from the University of California at Irvine.
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awesome! I was at the Summit at Cedars this year as well, and I found out that there are three other Christian Scientists at my university! That Summit sent out ripples of blessings.