Why Christian Science? – Association 2019

By Dyan Wingard, CS ♥️

This year’s Association assignment has enabled me to look at the foundation of my life as a Christian Scientist. The weekly study of the platform, in Science & Health, pages 330-340 has enabled a deeper exploration and dedication to the Principle and practice of Christian Science. Like our great Master, we have a spiritual agreement with God. “He expressed the highest type of divinity,…Thus it is that Christ illustrates the coincidence, or spiritual agreement, between God and man in His image.” S&H 332:29-2

Why Christian Science? This a question that I posed to my mother when I was a very small child. I love the answer she shared with me: “because it provides an open connection to God for you to know everything you ever wanted to know about Life.”

That moment became the starting point for my own personal journey in establishing my “open connection” with God. I have always loved getting quiet and listening to messages from God. As a young child, I would talk with God just like I was talking to another person. I easily recognized God’s voice and His Love for me. I knew and continue to know that my connection to God is always present (anytime and anywhere). Truth is always louder, clearer, and more mighty than any false material suggestion. There is nothing more important to me than what God knows and reveals to me as His eternal divine nature.

Christian Science has provided the path for me to grow spiritually through a deepened and pure understanding of the Christ. Growing up in the Christian Science Sunday School, I remember being drawn to a large portrait of Daniel in the Lion’s Den in the youngest Sunday School class, where Daniel stood looking out the window with the light illumining all around him and the lions are laying calmly behind him in the den. What did it take for Daniel to get to the point where he could trust God completely in the face of such great danger? Could I ever reach this level of spiritual demonstration in my own life? Prayer and fasting. That was the command that we were given by Jesus. Prayer in acknowledgment of our perfection as the natural and pure expression of the Christ Science and fasting by watching what we are taking in and holding in consciousness as the reality of true spiritual being.

God, our divine Comforter, became my personal Comforter when I was about 10 years old. At the time, my knee would give out sporadically and without warning. My mom took me to the doctor to have my knee examined and the X-ray came back showing that I had water on the knee. The doctor said that they could remove the excess fluid by draining it with a needle—but the fluid would eventually build back up. He said that it would be an ongoing process—and could only be managed through taking pills. This did not sit well with me at all. I was not going to let a material matter-based knee be in control of my movement or lack thereof. So, I did what I had always been taught to do by my mom and in Sunday School—I prayed. I prayed to God every day asking him to give me the same courage that he gave Daniel to face down the lions in the lion den. I prayed knowing that I was upheld by God’s love and that he was holding me firmly in His arms as his beloved daughter.

One day, after experiencing a lot of discomfort in my knee, I sat in my room and poured my heart out to God. I reminded God that he promised to protect and guide me and to keep me safe in every situation. Wasn’t I worthy of the same love and compassion that he showed Daniel? What happened next…I felt divinely inspired to walk across the room. I was afraid of falling down again—so I hesitated. But, the thought came again—“get up, and walk across the room.” I knew this was God speaking to me through my prayer—so I was obedient and started to walk across the room. It felt like someone was carrying me across the room. There was no pain or discomfort. That false picture had no choice but to give way to the clearer understanding that I now had of myself. My connection to God was intact and so was everything else about me. I was completely healed! I ran to tell my mom and she was so happy to celebrate this healing with me.

This is why Christian Science.