When I was a small child, my parents enrolled me in a Christian Science Sunday School. There I eagerly asked many questions about the purpose of life and why we exist. I learned early man's relationship to God, and that our true nature, as the reflection of God, is harmonious.

While I was in grammar school, my mother passed on. My father married again; then less than a year later he also passed on. In the anguish of these events, I prayed night and day according to what I had been taught in Sunday School. Through prayer I learned in some degree, at least, that man, as the child of God, is never separated from his Father-Mother God, but is continually supported by His love for His children. Sometimes my relationship with my stepmother was not a happy one, but this was greatly improved as I sought to please God first, in obedience to the first commandment.

While I was in college in the early thirties, and after I began to teach school following graduation, we were hard pressed financially. This was especially true when the income from the citrus ranch my father had developed eventually dropped to nothing. The ranch became a financial burden to my stepmother and me. But through constant faith in God and the application of what we had learned in Science, our needs were met, the ranch was sold, and our lives were placed on a firmer basis.

About the time the ranch was sold, I had class instruction in Christian Science. With greater spiritual insight from class, I recognized, among other things, that my employment was not localized in a certain place or in a particular relationship, but is in the activity where God places me. With this I saw the steps to take that led to fifteen years of happy and useful employment, in which I continued four years after I was married.

When I met the man I married, I found that in proportion as I strove to see my human companionship in light of man's relationship to God, the human relationship was harmonious and satisfying.

When our first child was born, complications appeared during labor. The attending physician had little hope that either the child or I would survive. We had engaged a Christian Science practitioner to help us through prayer. When the crisis came, the baby's position was changed in less than half an hour, without any human intervention, and the birth proceeded. Later, the physician told my husband that a miracle had taken place. Two other daughters were born in the following four years, without any complications.

More recently, I found I could not walk any distance without considerable pain, and evidence of internal bleeding. With the help of a practitioner, this condition was healed in a few days. I have since been able to join my husband on hiking and backpacking trips in the mountains, on one trip walking nearly twenty miles. On another occasion, with the prayer of a practitioner I was healed in a few hours of what appeared to be a kidney problem, accompanied by extreme pain. The healing came when I understood that nothing can obstruct harmonious life, because the activity of the Christ governs my life. At still another time, I was healed of influenza when I realized the scientific truth that weather conditions and contagion have nothing to do with the life of man, God's image. Each of these illnesses seemed distressing at the time, but through the application of Christian Science each became a steppingstone to a greater and more satisfying understanding of man's spiritual being as the child of God. Though we seem to need such steppingstones, the ideal progress is the grasping of spiritual truth in consciousness through inspiration and unfoldment. This, to me, is the ideal that the Christian Scientist seeks. Mrs. Eddy states in Science and Health (p. 567): "The Gabriel of His presence has no contests. To infinite, ever-present Love, all is Love, and there is no error, no sin, sickness, nor death."

My trust in God, when faced with adversities, has been enlightened and strengthened through the study of Christian Science, and never once has this trust gone unrewarded. I am deeply grateful that I am daily learning more of true being through the study of this divine Science.

(Mrs.) Katherine L. John
Seattle, Washington