How grateful I am for the mighty...

Lucy M. Ward

How grateful I am for the mighty laws of God, spiritually interpreted for daily use by Mrs. Eddy in the Christian Science textbook, Science and Health. In my brief study of this Science I had learned to place radical reliance on God, as taught by Christ Jesus and Mrs. Eddy. In the textbook she writes (p. 192), "Whatever holds human thought in line with unselfed love, receives directly the divine power."

While we were living on the edge of a vast forest in northern Wisconsin twenty-eight years ago, I proved the potency of the divine laws of God, as I understood them through my study of Christian Science, to protect and guide us at a time of peril. An old settler had directed my little daughter and me to a blueberry patch about four miles from home. As we walked along an abandoned logging road, we talked about the Bible stories, especially the one that told of Daniel's protection in the lions' den.

We had been picking for about two hours when the stillness was broken by the howling of a mother timber wolf and the yip-yip of her whelps not more than a city block away. I reasoned that the wolves must have seen us because of their elevated location, but we knew that our safety was in our awareness of God's ever-presence and power. So we continued to pick blueberries and rejoiced in our freedom from fear, even when the wolves came yelping to within two hundred feet of us.

We were so absorbed by the joy of our constant communion with God that we were unaware of the passing of time until warned by the lowering sun. Then I realized that there was not time to go around the lake before darkness set in, and praying to God to lead me, I decided on a shorter course, which would be only a little over a mile from home. It was over what appeared to be a marsh between two lakes. On our way there, as we came to the crest of a hill, we discovered the wolves' den and saw that it was empty. Divine Love had been our protector.

Suddenly, however, as we neared some towering grass on the short cut we were to take, my heart was filled with an almost overwhelming fear. Thinking that it must be because of the wolves behind us, I earnestly prayed to God to keep us safe. At this point I was led to quickly change our course somewhat, and whereas our home was due west, we were guided northeast for about a quarter of a mile. Then the sense of danger lifted, and we turned and headed for home at another spot across what I thought was a marsh.

It was only later, when I told a settler what we had done, that I realized the wonder of this experience. He told me that if we had not headed northeast, we would have walked right into a quicksand bog, of which, he added, state engineers had never found the bottom. A trapper and my husband verified the settler's words concerning the quicksand.

And that was not all. I learned that what had appeared to me to be a marsh between two lakes was really a sleazy blanket of grassy roots, twigs, and debris from an old abandoned beaver dam, floating upon the surface of one lake. We had been wonderfully guided to cross the lake on the solid foundation of the beaver dam, which at no place was over eighteen inches wide. If we had taken just one step either to the left or to the right we would have sunk through the treacherous blanket to the very deep water of the lake beneath.

I am still awed by the miracle of God's guidance along this unknown path. Apparently for several years not even a deer or a rabbit had used it, so that there was no trail to go by. This was conclusive proof that God had indeed directed us.

It has been proved very plainly to me that God's laws are as available to us today as they were when they sustained and supplied every need of the children of Israel in their journey to the promised land centuries ago, when we understand, adhere to, and obey them. Through the reading of the Bible and Science and Health I was healed of leakage of the heart and of Blight's disease in advanced stages.

For the influence of good that Christian Science is to the world and for class instruction from a consecrated teacher, I can only express my gratitude by my works.— (Mrs.) Lucy M. Ward, Hibbing, Minnesota.

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Gratitude for blessings received...

March 3, 1951

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