Russ Gerber

I felt beaten. Two years of preparing to make Christian Science healing my full-time profession, and it looked as though everything was falling apart. I had resigned my job, and so a significant portion of our family’s regular income had stopped. We’d planned to move across country, and our house was for sale, but months had passed with no one making an offer to purchase. My wife had been told she would have work waiting for her in our new community, but it looked like that, too, would not happen after all.

Then one Sunday morning in early July I attended a committee meeting just before the start of the church service. At that meeting the chairperson read remarks that Mary Baker Eddy had prepared for Sunday services on July 4th.

Those remarks pierced right through the defeat I’d been feeling.

“Never was there a more solemn and imperious call than God makes to us all, right here, for fervent devotion and an absolute consecration to the greatest and holiest of all causes. The hour is come.”

Those last four words resonated with me. Even though the chairperson continued reading, all I could think about was that “the hour is come.” But what more could I do? The house wasn’t selling, we weren’t moving, and the future looked grimmer with each passing day.

When I tuned back in to what was being read, I heard the final two sentences of Mrs. Eddy’s remarks, and it was as though she was looking straight into my eyes with these questions: “Will you give yourselves wholly and irrevocably to the great work of establishing the truth, the gospel, and the Science which are necessary to the salvation of the world from error, sin, disease, and death? Answer at once and practically and answer aright!”

Everything in my heart answered Yes! At that moment I knew beyond any doubt that I was going to be a professional Christian Science healer. Nothing would hinder that. Nothing. Not an economic slump. Not uncertainty about the future. Those things, I knew, would have to adjust to what God was asking me to do. They weren’t the highest priority. God and “establishing the truth” were. God would care for everyone in our family if we followed His direction faithfully and relied on His care.

Things turned around right away. Our house sold within a few weeks. My wife did have work waiting for her when we arrived in our new community. This happened over thirty years ago, and the practice of Christian Science healing continues to have that same priority for me today.

 

From the November 1, 2002 Christian Science Journal