No more knee trouble

One morning as I started to get out of bed, I found I could not put any weight on one leg. I’d been dealing with discomfort in my knee for some time, but I hadn’t given it much thought. I like to be active, and this condition scared me. I was afraid my walks, which I loved, would be over, as well as my ability to play tennis.

I called a Christian Science practitioner to pray for me. She gave me hope that this condition could be healed through prayer. Then I gingerly got out of bed and hobbled to my study to read the Bible Lesson from the Christian Science Quarterly for that week. The story about Eve and the serpent in the third chapter of Genesis caught my attention. The serpent was a tempter, telling Eve that she had the wrong information from God, and suggesting that if she wanted to be satisfied and happy, she should eat the fruit of the tree “in the midst of the garden,” contrary to God’s command (Genesis 3:3).

As I thought more deeply about this story, I realized that the serpent had no power over Eve. It couldn’t take her hand and put the fruit in it. All the serpent could do was suggest. It was up to Eve how to respond.

My study of Christian Science had taught me that God is good. He can be trusted. He is my Father-Mother and would not want me to be harmed. God wouldn’t deprive me of any good thing, including right activity.

I had also been learning that as real and powerful as the material senses seem to be, the spiritual fact is that God has all power: “God hath spoken once; twice have I heard this; that power belongeth unto God” (Psalms 62:11). I reasoned that even though the problem with my knee felt real, it was actually only a false suggestion that I had accepted, along with other untruths such as “You are getting older” and “Others your age are having knee problems.”

I recalled that Jesus told his followers to look away from the body to God, who cares for man as reliably as He feeds the ravens and clothes the lilies (see Luke 12:22–31). In her book Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, Mary Baker Eddy describes the deceptive nature of the physical senses and how thought affects the body: “A material body only expresses a material and mortal mind. A mortal man possesses this body, and he makes it harmonious or discordant according to the images of thought impressed upon it. You embrace your body in your thought, and you should delineate upon it thoughts of health, not of sickness” (p. 208).

From that point on, each time the knee bothered me, I prayerfully contradicted the thought that I was in pain or that I had a weak or discordant knee. I found myself silently praying, “No, this is only a suggestion. It has no power over me. God has all power and is ever present.” Continuing my prayers in this way, I experienced steady improvement. I started my daily walks again, and within a short time I was back to playing tennis. Soon, I was completely free of the knee problem, and I have remained so in the two years since.

This healing has been a milestone in my progress in getting to know God more and in learning to resist the claims of the physical senses. I understand better now that God, good, maintains us just as He created us—perfect. I am so grateful for Christian Science. It has been a blessing beyond words.