Severe chest pains overcome

by Joshua Sprague
from The Christian Science Journal, December 2021

Having been a Christian Scientist since I was thirteen years old, I have been accustomed to the idea of God being supreme. A few years ago, as I was reading the weekly Bible Lesson from the Christian Science Quarterlyin a time of need, this concept of supremacy asserted itself in my thought.

One night I was alone at home. My wife was on a trip to her annual Christian Science students’ association meeting. I had been sleeping peacefully, when I started to become aware of an uncomfortable sensation growing in my chest. At first I tried to ignore it and go back to sleep, but eventually I felt the need to get out of bed and walk around. But the uncomfortable feeling kept growing and became painful. Becoming alarmed, I sat down and made a concerted effort to focus my thought on God.

It has been my custom to start each day by reading the Bible Lesson, so at about 3 a.m. I did exactly that. It was there in the Lesson that I read this passage from Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy: “Christian Science brings to light Truth and its supremacy, universal harmony, the entireness of God, good, and the nothingness of evil” (p. 293).

Just as Christ Jesus used parables to teach the people who came to him because they needed a way to learn about God that was completely accessible and related to the lives they lived, so the idea of God’s supremacy unfolded itself in a language I understood and could take comfort in, as someone who had studied history in college.

What struck me that morning was how supremacy is a key component of the victor’s strategy in warfare. For instance, during World War II, in order for the Allies to successfully wrest control of Europe from the Axis powers, they knew they had to achieve air superiority over northern France. This made the D-Day landings possible. But for total victory to be possible, air supremacy had to be achieved. More than simple superiority, air supremacy meant that Axis aircraft practically couldn’t even get off the ground, so complete was Allied domination of the air by the end of the war.

Just as air supremacy guaranteed Allied success and victory, I saw that God’s supremacy guarantees that we can demonstrate complete health and harmony in our daily lives.

I knew that my prayers, being God-founded, could suffer no interference from some other seeming power, for God, Truth and Love, is All. My affirmations of divine Truth were in fact powerful and meaningful, and they could not be denied by any physical sensation.

Working with this new understanding of God, I felt calm and assured. My thought was no longer being dragged down by the fear of pain and of being alone. It was as if the concept of supremacy had created a beachhead in my thought from which I could expand my understanding of and reliance on God. While I did not feel completely free of the symptoms I had been feeling, the trajectory of my thoughts had changed drastically and my body was obedient to this uplift.

I waited until a decent hour to call a Christian Science practitioner who lived nearby and my wife, who was in a different time zone. The healing work of the practitioner enabled me to rest comfortably that morning, knowing that the operation of divine Love continued. Since she lived nearby, she was able to come visit me while my wife booked a return flight. By the time my wife returned in the early afternoon, I felt strong enough to drive to the airport to pick her up. I was able to resume my normal activities after that without any restriction.

Three days after this, I had occasion to undergo a physical exam with a doctor at a local hospital. I felt completely free and confident that I would be checked out without issue. The exam included a test of my heart, called an EKG, which involved attaching several wires to different parts of my chest and monitoring the electrical activity of my heart. Afterward, the doctor shared with me that the results were irregular. Since she was not a heart specialist, she couldn’t say more but insisted that I make an appointment with a heart specialist to further investigate the irregularity.

Between this exam and the next appointment with a cardiologist, it came to me that I could not be persuaded that the healing had not occurred. The inspiration that had come to me the night of the healing and the peace and calm I had experienced were the result of gaining a glimpse of God, and were real and enduring. No human opinion or material science was going to dissuade me that this experience of God’s healing love was somehow unreal.

At my second appointment, the cardiologist hooked me up to the same kind of wires I had seen before. When he returned with the results, he held two different sheets of paper in his hands and seemed puzzled. One sheet contained the results of the first EKG, and the second sheet contained the current results. Finally, after a few moments, he laughed and said that it was clear what had happened during the first test. The technician had essentially switched two of the wires that had been connected to my chest, which caused the irregular result. The doctor confirmed that my heart was healthy and functioning very efficiently.

This healing happened over two years ago and there has been no return of any of the symptoms described. I have enjoyed a great deal of physical activity and exertion with no fear of limitation or consequence. I am so grateful that God’s power, or supremacy, can be revealed to us in the simplest of ways, in the darkest of nights.

This article was published in the December 2021 issue of The Christian Science Journal. To learn more about this monthly magazine, published online and in print, visit HERE.