"The very circumstance, which your suffering sense deems wrathful...

Elsie M. Draper

"The very circumstance, which your suffering sense deems wrathful and afflictive, Love can make an angel entertained unawares." So writes Mary Baker Eddy in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures (p. 574).

That is exactly what happened when I first came to know Christian Science sixty years ago. I was still a teen-ager and very fed up with my condition—lack of energy and lack of interest in life altogether. I had been told by a blood specialist Mother took me to that I had a deficiency of red blood corpuscles and would never be able to take part in normal youthful activities like other girls of my age. My mother was also very ill at that time. A Christian Scientist came to see her and brought with her a very precious book, which she told us she read every day together with her Bible. It was Science and Health. She said she would lend it to us for one week, and asked if I would read it to Mother. This visitor came as an angel to our need.

The very first page in the Preface of the book was full of interest, with the opening words (p. vii) "To those leaning on the sustaining infinite, to-day is big with blessings."

Well, that was the best piece of advice we had heard or had ever read. We said the Lord's Prayer together, and we began to feel that it really was true. We could rely on God as sustaining, strengthening us both. Then we read the Lord's Prayer, with its spiritual interpretation, given at the end of the chapter "Prayer" (Science and Health, pp. 16-17). One part reads:

"Give us this day our daily bread;
Give us grace for to-day; feed the famished affections."

We began to feel strength, blessing us. Mother got up and dressed; she had not done so for months. I myself felt stronger than I had for a good time.

We purchased our own copy of that wonderful book, and we were invited to go to a Wednesday testimony meeting in Manchester. Mother was well and strong through what she had learned in Science and Health. I gained energy and the desire to live and took up my music again, which I had given up owing to lack of strength to play the violin.

I was able to take a post of teaching. Mother was able to organize a house removal to the country, and we both joined a Christian Science Society. I gained strength and was healed of a great many physical difficulties; the healing effect included my having sound teeth for many years.

Blessings of this kind, that seem as angels sent to your side, as a hymn says, "to comfort, guard and guide" (Christian Science Hymnal, No. 9), continue for me. Today I live in a Christian Science House (residential) with a branch church near, where I am able to continue church membership.

Other healings in later years include overcoming the effect of heavy bruising of my neck and back after a car accident; better relationship with family and more love expressed by both sides. Also, through prayer a blockage in one ear was cleared very quickly.

I am sincerely grateful to be a member of The Mother Church and a branch church, and for the blessing of class instruction. I am sincerely grateful for the practitioners who helped Mother and me along the way to health and happiness. Thanks be to God. "In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths" (Prov. 3:6).

(Miss) Elsie M. Draper
Sutton Coldfield, West Midlands, England

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