'What Should I Do?'

Bringing a spiritual perspective to world events and daily life.

People have often been attracted to Christian Science for physical healing. I was not. Our twin sons were in the fourth grade and were unable to read. At a parent-teacher conference, I heard the gloomy pronouncement that, should they continue to learn at their present rate, by the time they had finished sixth grade they would be reading at only a second-grade level.

"What should I do?" I asked a friend, a Christian Scientist. She suggested I pray. We had talked about prayer before, but I just couldn't see that God (who seemed to me to be remote, faceless, and undefined) would stop the world to tie our family's shoelaces, so to speak.

But that evening I was to begin learning the power of prayer. I began to understand that God is the very Principle of our being, and that He loves us beyond measure. He is not faceless and undefined, but knowable and ever near. All the shoelaces for all His children were never "untied."

Although prayer was a new concept for me, I acknowledged my human inability to help these children anymore than I had and understood that they were God's children, not mine. As such, God was caring for them. He was providing for them. This prayer was unrehearsed, but heartfelt. Trusting them to God's care was for me the great step.

The earth did continue to spin. But the unrelenting frustration and disappointment I had been feeling ceased. Doors that before seemed barred began to open. Needed remedial educational opportunities became available in the most remarkable ways.

I was learning that God meets the needs of all His children (including grown-ups) in real, tangible ways. This caused me to change my thinking about who God is and how I relate to Him. The Bible says, "God is love" (I John 4:16). As such, He loves all of us. I began to see how powerful this fact is.

Mary Baker Eddy wrote a book that explains the demonstrable Science behind the healing works of Christ Jesus. It is called Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures. Page 473 says, "In an age of ecclesiastical despotism, Jesus introduced the teaching and practice of Christianity, affording the proof of Christianity's truth and love; but to reach his example and to test its unerring Science according to his rule, healing sickness, sin, and death, a better understanding of God as divine Principle, Love, rather than personality or the man Jesus, is required." That's what I was doing-learning that the healing Principle we call God is universal and reliable, and that the Science of Christianity is more certain than the science of mathematics.

While developmental problems or lack of educational opportunities may not seem at first to fit conveniently into any of those sickness, sin, or death categories, nonetheless, resolutions to our problems began to take place as I turned to God.

To conventional thinking, people seem to be "here," doing their thing, while God is "there," doing His thing, occasionally looking in on His children and responding, sometimes, when called. How wrong this concept is.

The study of Christian Science, of God's laws as they pertain to humanity, reveals a very different perspective: God as ever present and available to care for all His children. Open your heart and thought to this truth, and His presence becomes more real and meaningful. Prayer and living according to the Bible's teachings help your progress.

Whether or not you have had a church affiliation or a lot of spiritual instruction, you can begin by simply setting aside time to discover how God is knowable in your life. If a bad situation seems beyond control, you can find that it is not beyond God's power. If you are sick or injured, you can know that God did not cause your trouble, nor does He see you, His child, in any such evil way.

Almost sixteen years have passed since that school conference and my evening of prayer that followed. Our children became voracious readers. One son has now finished college, and the other is serving in the military, looking forward to returning to college and to entering law school.

Prayer is a viable way of overcoming all obstacles, including educational and learning disabilities. Prayer brings the assurance of healing.