by Don Ingwerson

How God heals. Difficult to explain, but inspiring when it happens.

Daily I’m asked to explain how Christian Science works. The response that prayer is key to physical and emotional healing can raise eyebrows. Questions always follow.

When someone is involved in healing and experiences first hand how deeply prayer can heal, the healing works of Christ Jesus become much more relevant.

Mary Baker Eddy, who founded Christian Science, was personally healed by turning to the Bible. Rather than trying to academically explain how healings take place, I will share a recent healing as told by the wife of the man who was healed and the attending doctor, and later shared in a minister’s sermon.

The doctor admitted my friend, Edward, into the hospital. He then met Edward’s wife, handed her a box of Kleenex and her husband’s clothing, and regretfully told her that they probably could not save him. She immediately called a Christian Science practitioner. She said, “The doctor says this is very serious.” That was all she had time to say. The practitioner responded, “It certainly is; the Truth is the most serious thing in the universe. Have no fear.”

His recovery was beautiful, as though nothing had ever been wrong, which in Truth, it had not…and that’s serious Truth. Prior to checking her husband out of the hospital a few days later, the wife asked the doctor (who was so sure he wouldn’t make it) to come back and see him. The doctor was shocked at the recovery and asked what had happened. She said, “Do you remember that I said I had to make a phone call? It was to a Christian Science practitioner. That’s what happened.” The doctor called the home a few days later and asked if he could write up the healing to be delivered as a sermon at his church.

The wife said yes, and the following appeared in a Dallas sermon:

April 2011 “I was working a few weeks ago in the emergency department at Parkland Hospital, and a fairly young guy in cardiac arrest was brought in by the paramedics. His heart had stopped beating and he was not breathing. He was essentially dead. The paramedics had worked on him en route, but to no avail. We spent another 20 minutes working on him in the ER before we were able to get his heart restarted. Despite getting his heart to beat again, his prognosis was grim. He had been without a heartbeat or spontaneous respirations for over 30 minutes, and had been receiving CPR throughout that time. There was little chance that his brain had survived that long without adequate oxygen. I spoke to his wife in the ER immediately after he had gone to the cath lab to let her know how he was doing and that he probably had less than a 5% chance of having any meaningful neurological recovery. She…called a friend to pray for him, and I learned the friend was a believer. I promised her I would pray for him and their family as well.

“The next morning…he opened his eyes and began to squeeze his wife’s hand. Within 30 minutes the breathing tube was out, and he was breathing on his own. He slowly began to wake up, and the next day he was transferred to a regular bed. I went to see him in the hospital, and he was eating, walking, and able to have a conversation. He did have some amnesia, but over the next few days even that improved and he soon went home. When I spoke to his wife over the phone just a week later…. He had basically made a complete recovery just as we had prayed. As the father of two young children, his presence in the household would have been greatly missed. God had mercy on their family and healed him in a miraculous way. Last I spoke to them, he continues to do well.”

So how would you explain this healing?