Watching Point 315

315 — WATCH, if you fail to heal in any case, lest you blame your patient rather than yourself. While you may not be wholly or even partly to blame, it is wholesome to assume that you are, since thereby you are quickened to do better.

If you were given an auger and told that it would bore a hole in any kind of wood, you might find in practice that at times some kinds contained so many knots, that you could not make a hole. We know that our understanding of God heals the sick; yet a patient’s thought may be full of the knots of unbelief, or hardness of heart. Mrs. Eddy once said, “If you have a patient who does not respond, would you say, ‘I have done the best I could,’ and give up? No; it is the opportunity to rise higher and meet the demand.”

Paint remover will always remove paint; but you might be called upon to use it in a spot that was almost inaccessible. The skill of a practitioner is not required so much to apply the truth to a patient’s error, as it is to open the way so that the error is exposed. Then the application of truth is a simple matter.