It is truly amazing how God works. One night recently, I woke at around 1:30 am with the very firm and clear direction to pay my tithing to the church with 10% of what I had drawn down to the household that week. Whilst my training business has had some busy times, the so-called pandemic has caused some very lean times also, and since I was not taking a “wage” as such, I had not tithed. So when I was woken in the middle of the night with this strong direction to tithe, I really listened because it seemed very urgent and this feeling was strong enough to overcome my sense of fear about tithing during a non-income period. So I paid my tithing, and I felt God’s Love immediately, and I felt that I had done what God had asked, and then I fell back to sleep in a lovely, heavenly peaceful sleep. Well, you can only imagine how amazed I was to hear a testimony at this Church a couple of days later about tithing and how, through faithfully tithing, even without income, the testifier saw God’s blessing come before the savings ran out. This spoke to me on a very deep level and showed me that I have much to learn and demonstrate on this matter. Mary Baker Eddy wrote – “… error in the premise leads to errors in the conclusion.”(Science and Health, page 277) Raised in a Mormon household as I was, 10% tithing was strictly observed and paid each and every month. But it was done in a most fearful and sad state; it was done tearfully as a victim. It was not done out of pure faith, trust, and priceless Love for our dearest Father-Mother God, who gives us every good thing that ever there was. I could see that throughout my formative years, the idea of tithing in old theology had been blamed for all manner of financial problems and that this erroneous thinking would try to turn even the faithful act of tithing practice into martyrdom, which is not the Spirit of God’s loving laws that He has given us for our growth. I am so grateful that we are taught here, truly at this Holy Church, that God will look after every single thing when we faithfully follow His Laws.

I am truly humbled by the blessings that have followed throughout this week – many blessings have transpired in this last week since God woke me up in the middle of the night and required me to pay my tithing. So my ever and eternal thanks to our God of Love – our dearest Father-Mother God for all the good that you have always done and will always do for each one of us. Thank you to our dearest Christ Jesus, the heart breaks with Love at your demonstration – and thank you to our dearest Forever Leader, Mary Baker Eddy, for giving us this Science of the Christ so that we may prove to ourselves each day the absolute Truth of the Bible accounts and the absolute Truth of the accounts of Christian Science healing. Truly, I have been healed of my fear of paying tithing because I now know that it is God who provides the finance to pay the tithing in the first place. Thank you to this beautiful, precious, and Holy Church – thank you to our dear Practitioners for teaching us this, and thank you to our beautiful members and workers around the globe, and so much love to you all.

About a week ago I woke up with a super sore foot. It felt like a dislocated bone. That evening, when I finished working, I asked God what would be good for me to listen to. I was led to the playlists on the Plainfield YouTube channel and the teaching testimonies. I started back to the earliest ones, listening to several each night. I do not know when it was, but as I walked on my foot one day, the bone popped back into position. God told me to curl up all my toes tight and hold them like that a few times during the day. The foot is very strong again. I can dance perfectly fine. I am learning so much each day what a freedom it is to not identify myself with genetics or heredity and reverse it quickly when people talk about these things around me; knowing the truth for them and everyone in the world.  

I’m especially grateful for a healing the other night. I woke up around two in the morning because I was having trouble sleeping. I had a high fever along with a nasty cough. It was very troubling because I couldn’t go back to sleep as much as I wanted to, and I was worried that I might wake the other people up. I decided to go downstairs, knowing this cough was not sent from God. I prayed this way but the cough continued to increase. Then the message came to go to my phone. I found one of my favorite hymns on the Plainfield website, by Mrs. Eddy, number 207. I read the hymn to myself, and as I was reading it, I made it my own, every word of it. Then I played the music to myself, and as I listened to it, I started to feel this calmness. The hymn was so beautiful; it was like listening to the voices of the angels. I was feeling God’s presence right there with me, just like the words of the hymn said. I felt God’s arms just wrapping around me at that moment. I forgot about all the trouble that I had earlier. The cough and high fever left. I shut out all the negative thoughts of illness, completely shut out the door. I was just in this peaceful moment as the music was singing to me. I fell asleep and slept through until the next morning when my son came and woke me up. I woke up like a new man. The fever was completely gone, and the cough did not return. It was an amazing feeling. 

I don’t have enough words to describe how grateful I am to God for this healing and how grateful I am to Mrs. Eddy, for she gave us powerful tools to work with. As we continue to prove in our daily lives that Christian Science is the way and that it can heal all illnesses, small or big, I’m grateful for everything that I’m learning here and for what God is doing in this church.

I have learned many tremendous lessons in Christian Science since joining this church. One of the lessons that I’m very grateful for involves tithing. Tithing is contributing 10% of one’s income on a regular basis to one’s church. For most of us, that amount can seem like a big sacrifice or even financial hardship. For most people, it would represent a great leap of faith. I have learned in this church that while tithing is practical giving, more importantly, it is an attitude; it shows a deep trust in God for providing for all of our needs and great gratitude to Him for His provision.

We learn in Christian Science that God is the source of all good, including our income, and that there is no limit to his goodness. I have also learned in Christian Science that giving, as God directs us, fits us to receive more of God’s goodness. It’s like the Covenant between God and the Israelites; He took care of them as long as they did what He wanted them to do. This principle applies to all of us; as long as we’re taking care of His church, He will take care of us. So this kind of giving can never impoverish us; it can only bless us. We don’t do it for that reason, but it does bless us when we give cheerfully and willingly to God’s church. I have experienced years when it’s been easy to tithe, and I’ve experienced years when it has been very difficult to tithe. Several years ago, my family and I had no income. I had to ask myself, “Does that mean I don’t give anything to the church?” The answer was no, “That’s not what it means. You have savings.” I continued to contribute to the church, and as it turned out, before we ran out of savings, our business turned around, and I quickly recovered everything I had lost.

I know that it was God’s provision for being faithful to giving to his church, and I’ve never forgotten that, and I will never forget that experience. Still, it’s a great lesson for me that gratitude is a great safety. It’s essential for our spiritual growth, and to tithe each week willingly and cheerfully really is great progress in that spiritual growth. Hence, I’m grateful for all the lessons I’m learning in this church in Christian Science and grateful to Christ Jesus for showing us how to live our lives. I’m thankful to Mary Baker, who was ready to discover the Science of Christianity and how it is practical and applies to every one of us.

I am most grateful for the healing prayers of my practitioner at Plainfield Christian Science Church independent. I had sent an email to her requesting prayerful support for severe pain in my legs, knee, and the upper part of my body. I didn’t address it right away like I should have. It was difficult for me to walk as I often have to walk long distances. I never had anything like this before in my lifetime. I prayed using a line from Science and Health by Mary Baker Eddy on page 215, “Spirit’s senses are without pain, and they are forever at peace.” This in conjunction with my practitioner’s prayers brought release from the pain. It first dissipated by degrees and then it was completely gone. I was able to walk again without any discomfort. I am very thankful for this quick healing. Thank you to Christ Jesus, Mary Baker Eddy, and the Plainfield church, for purifying thought worldwide and bringing forth more and more the holy leaven of Truth.

This is a testimony I gave when I was here in Plainfield just a little over three years. I had been thinking of it today, so I decided to give it again:

I am so grateful for all that Christian Science is bringing to my life, and how being a member of this church is helping me to understand and be grateful for all that God imparts.

Learning that God is the only source of supply has been quite a revelation to me. I am really trying to see each day all that comes my way as coming directly from Him, and I can feel how this line of thought is dissolving my fears of lack and any worries about the future.

For quite a while, almost since I arrived in Plainfield, I had been thinking and praying about how I could pay back the church and all the members for everything they have done for me. This thought had stayed with me for a while, and then not long ago the most shocking realization came: Since God is the source of all supply, I am asking God to supply me with the means to pay Him back for what He supplied.

As I thought that, I actually laughed out loud. It was such foolishness.

So then I prayed: What can I do? How can I make good on this massive debt I feel for God, Christian Science, this church, and everyone here?

The answer I have gotten so far is that I need to just get up in the morning and do the work I am given to do. And, as Mrs. Eddy wrote in Miscellaneous Writings, page 116: “Never absent from your post, never off guard, never ill-humored, never unready to work for God, — is obedience; being ‘faithful over a few things.'”

I am grateful that God has given me the ability and a place in this church to be useful to Him. I am grateful for daily practitioner support keeping my thought right, and for everything this church offers and stands for that gives me what I need to strive for obedience and usefulness as I work to be ‘faithful over [the] few things’ God gives me to do daily. Thank you!

There are so many things that I am grateful for, and in pondering this I realized quite suddenly (and don’t know why I hadn’t thought about it before)that gratitude is not a personal attribute. It is a quality of God that is inherent in all of us. So it is not our own personal thankfulness for blessings, it is the very expression of God! I was so grateful for this small, (but profound to me) revelation.

I also wanted to express my gratitude for an experience that I had last week. I woke up in the morning with a big black mark under my eye, and for no apparent reason. The following night it felt very itchy and it was much blacker when I went to bed. I immediately thought of Mary Baker Eddys wonderful quote “God. The Great I Am; the all-knowing, all-seeing, all-acting, all-wise, all-loving, and eternal.” I reasoned that this was the only eye (I) that there was, since God is All. There could not be an “eye” that was sickly or seeing a problem. I forgot all about this until the following day when I realized there was no sign of any problem with my eye, all was perfectly back to normal. A wonderful lesson in seeing the evidence of the Allness of God at work!

Thanks be to God for His wondrous works, to Christ Jesus the Way Shower and to Mary Baker Eddy for her amazing gift to mankind, Christian Science.

“One day, I didn’t invite a friend to my birthday party and she was hurt. She ignored me for a month or so. I didn’t invite her because she was bossy and mean. This went on since second grade. We prayed about this in Sunday School.

Then she came to her senses this year and she apologized to three people who didn’t like her. They accepted her apology and started to talk again and we talked it out, and we are friends again.”

Last November, a few days after Hamas attacked Israel, I was traveling on a ferry from Denmark to Germany. I went out on the deck and met a group of young Palestinians, one of whom came up to me and asked me in a very friendly way where I was from and where I was going. We started talking and as a Palestinian and he tried to justify the attack of Hamas. I replied that violence can never be justified, not even by the long history of violence between Israel and Palestine, and then he asked me if I could give him some advice for his life. After a brief moment of surprise, a clear voice entered my heart and I answered: Love your neighbour as yourself.

He was very surprised and I explained to him that there was literally no other way out of this decades-long conflict because any form of violence would always be met with violence, a deadly spiral. he kept insisting that the Israelis were in the wrong. I asked him if there were people he deeply loved, and of course, he said yes, and we got into a conversation about love. We talked about how love, real, deep love from the human heart, is an active divine gift, is always reciprocated, and that we must trust and can trust in a great solution of every conflict based on the divine love.

His initial great resistance melted and I noticed that he was very thoughtful. Suddenly he took me in his arms, embraced me and kissed me on the cheek. I then also kissed him on the cheek, called him my brother and we said goodbye. We had both had an encounter with divine love, with the Christ, with the Truth.

Deep gratitude fills me and never leaves me, gratitude for Christian Science, for the love of the Christ, for the genius, the patience and the meekness of Mary Baker Eddy, for the wonderful people who surround us, and for the great work done for and by Plainfield Christian Science Independent.