God Hears You, Too

(Written especially for young people)

I WAS fourteen and played clarinet in our high-school band. That was fun. But there was a problem: a wart on the back of my right thumb made it awkward for me to hold up my clarinet. There were several other warts on both hands, but I remember the one in particular because it made playing my clarinet so hard.

Because I'd already had a number of healings through prayer, I'd been thinking about how Christian Science could help me solve this problem, too. One day while I was walking the two miles home from school, a thought came to me. God doesn't have warts!

That almost made me laugh. God with warts? No way! I'd learned in the Christian Science Sunday School and from reading the Bible that God is Love. And He made everything good, everything pure and beautiful and perfect. What God made is spiritual, too, not material.

I'd also learned something else: I--and everyone--am made in God's image and likeness. We read this in the very first chapter of the Bible, in Genesis: ``And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness . . . . So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him'' (1:26, 27). And Mary Baker Eddy, the author of Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, describes man as ``the compound idea of infinite Spirit; the spiritual image and likeness of God; the full represent ation of Mind'' (p. 591).

I like thinking about how God made me to express Him. At the Wednesday evening meetings that my mother and I attend at a Christian Science Church we hear testimonies of healings resulting from day-to-day living of the Bible truths Christian Science helps us understand. While I was praying about this particular problem, Mom and I heard several testifiers who impressed me a lot as they talked about their real identity as spiritual ideas of God.

Now, as I thought of how God, Spirit, has made me in His image and likeness, I saw that my real, spiritual identity couldn't have any warts. Spirit has no warts for me to reflect. So, OK. I looked at my hands. The warts were there; I could feel them and see them. But I was also beginning to realize that they were mistakes, not at all part of my real self. I didn't have to have them unless I wanted them.

Want to have them? I certainly did not! I said firmly and out loud, ``I refuse to accept them. God never made anything ugly, and nobody and nothing can make me have them.'' I could really understand that I didn't have anything unless God gave it to me. And because God is perfect and good, everything He creates is perfect and good, as well.

About three weeks later I noticed my hands were clear and smooth. I'd been healed! And I never had a problem with warts again.

I learned something special from that healing. Christian Science really does work, just as I'd been taught. And I could turn to God--to His power, His wisdom, His love--by myself. God isn't there just for adults, He's there for everyone. And, best of all, He is always there, everywhere. No problem is too big for Him, or too small either.