My steppingstone

Laurel Smith

There are so many tales of how people have found Christian Science. I’ve enjoyed each one I have read and heard. This one is different. It’s not deep, nor is it dramatic. Perhaps it’s amusing. I learned about being a Christian Scientist by reading a novel.

I was a small child at the beginning of the Great Depression. My family’s modest rental home was far on the outskirts of Indianapolis, and although my parents worked, times were difficult—even to the point that our car was repossessed.

Because I loved to read, my grandmother, who lived with us, gave me a book that had been my mother’s when she was a child. It was Jewel’s Story Book, a sequel to the book Jewel by Clara Louise Burnham, a popular author of the early 20th century. In both books Jewel is a little girl who brings health and joy to her family and friends by bringing Christian Science into their lives.

I read and reread the book and eventually found a library copy of the original, Jewel, which I also loved. When I learned that my mother had been raised in Christian Science, I also began to think of myself as being “in Science.”

By the early 1940s, when I was almost ready for high school, our financial situation and the general economy had greatly improved. We moved to the city, and, to my great joy, I discovered a Christian Science church not many blocks from our home. I began walking the several blocks to church on Sundays, sometimes with my grandmother. Eventually I learned about testimony meetings on Wednesday evenings, too.

One evening, a year or so after I began attending the church, I introduced myself to the lovely lady whom I had seen reading the Bible from the desk on Sundays. That proved to be a huge steppingstone in my life as a Christian Scientist. She had finished her term as Reader shortly before and was beginning to teach a Sunday School class. She invited me to join it. I loved it.

Then and all through my college and young adult life this woman was a true friend and mentor. She urged me to memorize a sentence from Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy: “At all times and under all circumstances, overcome evil with good” (p. 571). How often I have been grateful for that guidance.

Our angel guides come to us in many different forms. Mine was a book. Jewel was not literature published by The Christian Science Publishing Society, but it was my steppingstone to church, Sunday School, Primary class instruction, and many years of joy in being a Christian Scientist.

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Spiritual Lens

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March 11, 2013

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