Article September 3, 2012 Issue

Learning from Grandma

How a new author came to write her first book.

Sarah Gall

Every summer, on first arriving at Grandma’s house, there were three things I had to do. First, eat a large slice of Grandma’s apple pie; second, paint my fingernails an elegant shade of silvery pink; third, go out and buy a lined exercise book to write stories and draw pictures in. Ever since the age of about four I had wanted to write a book, and Grandma’s house was a good place to try … and keep on trying.

Many people have a great desire to write a book. How often do you hear someone say, “I’ve got a book in me!” Perhaps you’ve heard it said so often that you’ve begun to think your own yearning to write doesn’t really mean anything, and you should just ignore it and get on with something else—which is how I’ve felt quite often. But Jesus’ parable of the talents, which I grew up with in the Christian Science Sunday School, makes it clear that we have to use the talents we’ve been given (see Matthew 25:14–30). So, I learned at an early age that we all have God-given talents, and that God shows us how to use our gifts in a way that blesses us and, most important, others.

Among God’s gifts is that of creativity, and Mary Baker Eddy enlarged on this in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, where she wrote: “Creation is ever appearing, and must ever continue to appear from the nature of its inexhaustible source” (p. 507). This source, she has already explained, is infinite Mind, God. So creation isn’t something we do by ourselves. God is the Creator, and as His children we reflect His creation in our own individual ways—by listening for a good idea and by working conscientiously until we have expressed that idea in the highest and most complete way possible.

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