"the maid arose"

 Taking a leaf out of Joyce's book, this morning I turned to our book Stories of Healing: Jesus and his followers to research a healing in this week's Bible Lesson on Christ Jesus.

Stories of Healing: Jesus and his followers, page 69 showing Jesus greeting the crowd upon his return 

from Gadara west across the sea of Galilee to Roman-occupied Capernaum.

The story occurs in Matthew 9 and it's about the healing of a 12 year old girl who had died. Her father, a man in charge (a "ruler") in the local synagogue, was distraught. But he was probably one of "a great multitude" who "followed [Jesus] because they saw his miracles" (John 6:2), the most recent of which was the way he had healed a man of paralysis (Matt 9: 2-8) and a woman of an chronic (12 years) health problem related to blood (Matt. 9: 20-22). 

Because the mourners at the girl's house treated Jesus with disrespect when he announced that she was not dead but merely sleeping, the Master sent them packing. Our book explains that according to Jewish customs:

    "when someone died, people visited the person's family to show their love and to help them. The usual mourning period...was seven days. Jews also followed certain rituals to show their grief. People who were mourning wore clothes made of sackcloth--a rough, dark-colored material made of goat's or camel's hair.... Immediately after a person died, the family hired "mourners" (usually women) to weep and wail..."        p. 268

Soon the girl was alive and well. 

Marjorie Macartney's poem "If Jairus's daughter had spoken" in the August 1986 issue of The Christian Science Journal offers a nice insight into this healing:

If Jairus's daughter had spoken

Marjorie Macartney

Jesus said I was not dead.
He knew the light of Life shone in my heart.

The voice of Truth, with awakening touch,

Spoke with dominion, "Maid, arise."

That Word of God brought me, not back,

But forward to the revelation of where I'd always been,

Always am, always will be--living in God.

I do not live again but never died.

The warmth of resurrection melts the frost of fear,

Love is the pasture where His lambs skip fearlessly.

Only the myth of mortality is consumed,

Never the one, the ever-present Life.

Imagine what an impact this healing would have had, not only on the girl's family and friends, but also on those who worshipped at the local synagogue. This was indeed proof "of divine Love casting out error and healing the sick" as noted by Mary Baker Eddy in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 135.

Julie Swannell

Speech and hearing difficulties healed

I have finally used our blog book (Stories of Healing: Jesus and his followers) the way it is meant to be used.

The Bible-Lesson for this week includes the story of the Jesus' healing of the man with hearing and speaking difficulties.  On consulting the Index of our book I found it beginning on page 100.

It is pointed out that Jesus used a form of sign language to communicate with the man and indicate that he could heal him -- "He touched the man's ears to show him that be healed of deafness..  Next, he touched the man's tongue to show him  that he would be healed of his speech problems."

Have we not all wondered about that touching?  What a simple explanation.

A side-bar points us to information about Healing by Touch on page 267,  And another side-bar points to information about spit - page 269.  Page 252 has a contemporary healing of deafness of a child.  We come to this through the Index.   

Another story in the Bible Lesson this week is that of Jesus feeding the "five thousand men, beside women and children."  I don't find this in our book.  Probably because it is not an actual healing.

 Joyce Voysey

God's protecting presence and power

Clifford Kapps Eriksen’s testimony on page 244 (Stories of Healing: Jesus and his followers) reminded me how important it is to begin our day with study of the Christian Science Quarterly Bible Lesson.

Clifford fell about 50 feet on a building site when the catwalk he was standing on gave way.

He writes, “I had, as usual for me, begun my day studying the Bible and correlative passages from Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy as found in the Christian Science Quarterly Bible Lessons. As I lay there on the basement floor, I clung to what I’d gained that morning about God’s protecting presence and power.”

Clifford was inspired by Paul’s experiences of God’s protective power he had read about that morning. He says he was comforted to realise that he couldn’t be separated from God’s love by height or depth.

He soon emerged from the basement unharmed, joyous, and completely free of any injury.

Our period of study of the Christian Science Lesson-Sermon can equip us to meet any challenge which may come up in our daily life.

Then I noticed the testimony about fire ant stings on page 254. I do not have a name for the ants which I was stung by, but I have shared my healing in yesterday’s blog post. This experience has impressed me ever since it happened, as a time when I listened for a message from God and it came. Here is the background to that testimony.

My husband and I had moved to the Northern Rivers of New South Wales to take on macadamia nut farming. To pick the nuts (picking being the term used for harvesting at that time) my method was to take a hessian potato sack and a bucket, and equipped with overalls, gloves and rubber boots (Wellies), I would sit on the sack and pick up the nuts one by one. However, this must have been at summer time for my legs were bare.

See yesterday’s post titled “Fixed” for the rest of the story.

Joyce Voysey

Fixed

Well, there had been torrential rain and many of the macadamia nuts had been washed down into the cow paddock. So I went there to work. I must have put my sack on an ants’ nest, for my bare legs suffered many stings. Those ants were about twice the size of an ordinary ant.

In bed that night I found myself scratching the strong itches from the stings, and, knowing that I was bad at resisting scratching, I knew I needed God’s help. I decided to listen for a message. For a while there was a train of unhelpful thoughts, and then I realised that one thought had been relevant. It was, “Leave it, I will fix it.” A little reasoning about who would fix it brought peace. I knew it was God. Very soon I went off to sleep, the itching having stopped.

The next day I was tempted to scratch again, but the message was repeated, “Leave it, I will fix it.” Whereas the original message was a very quiet one, this time it was more like a trumpet blast.

I had looked up “fix” in Mary Baker Eddy’s writings and found that she does not use it in the sense of making things better. Rather she emphasises the fixed nature of God’s creation. To-day, having checked Science and Health and Prose Works to confirm my reasoning at the time, I have found a delightful use of fix in a poem Mrs. Eddy wrote in girlhood – Alphabet and Bayonet: “Go fix thy restless mind/On learning’s lore and wisdom’s might,/And live to bless mankind.”

The poem seems prophetic of Mrs. Eddy’s future as the Discoverer of the Science of Christianity. Here it is.

 

Alphabet and Bayonet

If fancy plumes aerial flight,
Go fix thy restless mind
On learning's lore and wisdom's
might,
And live to bless mankind.
The sword is sheathed, 'tis freedom's hour,
No despot bears misrule,
Where knowledge plants the foot of power
In our God-blessed free school.

Forth from this fount the streamlets flow,
That widen in their course.
Hero and sage arise to show
Science the mighty source,
And laud the land whose talents rock
The cradle of her power,
And wreaths are twined round Plymouth
Rock,
From erudition's bower.

Farther than feet of chamois fall,
Free as the generous air,
Strains nobler far than clarion call
Wake freedom's welcome, where
Minerva's silver sandals still
Are loosed, and not effete;
Where echoes still my day-dreams thrill,
Woke by her fancied feet.

(Poems, Mary Baker Eddy, pp. 60:0–4 (np))

Joyce Voysey