Article September 23, 1916 Issue

Bursting Our Bonds

JULIA VACHER

ABOUT a year ago, while sitting on our side porch, my attention was called to a pretty young mango tree which was just bearing its first fruit. We had been living in the Canal Zone about six years at the time. The building was in the old French quarters, and on the outside were the remains of several old concrete forms, into one of which a mango seed had fallen and sprouted. My family at the time remarked that it was "a queer place for a seed to take root in;" but the life was there, and as the rain and the sunshine came the tiny plant continued to grow until it filled up the form so that it burst. Gratitude for its new found freedom was expressed by its lovely blossoms, and in due time the fruit appeared, which rounded out and ripened.

One morning, after I had finished the reading of the Lesson-Sermon, on looking into the garden my eye chanced to fall on the mango tree, and it was a wonderful lesson of what divine Love will do for each one of us. Sometimes we are apparently so embedded in some form of materiality that it seems almost impossible to break the bonds asunder; but our Leader tells us that "warmed by the sunshine of Truth, watered by the heavenly dews of Love, the fruits of Christian Science spring upward, and away from the sordid soil of self and matter" (Miscellaneous Writings, p. 343). By patience and slow but steady growth the true idea, although seemingly hampered on every side, will at last realize its freedom, the encumbering error will fall away, and "the fruit of Spirit" will in due time be made manifest.

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