Imagine yourself on top of the Empire State Building, enjoying the view of New York City with your family. One of your children asks for money to buy a souvenir, and you take out a five-dollar bill to give to him. Suddenly a gust of wind takes the bill out of your hand and blows it away, over the protective spikes surrounding the observation deck. Now, I ask you, how likely is it that you will find that bill again? In a fictional story, you very well might, for the writer has full control over his plot. But in real life, so called? Impossible? Or is that impossibility also "so called"?

Something analogous to the preceding anecdote happened to me not long ago.

In 1972 my wife and I received, as a gift from her parents, $10,000 worth of city bearer bonds. I immediately placed the packet of coupons in our safe deposit box at a local bank. Thereafter, every six months I would go to the bank, redeem one coupon, and deposit the money in our savings account. This went on until the bond matured on January 1, 1980, when I redeemed the last of the coupons and made the final deposit. At that time, not having any previous experience in this area of investments, I tore up the receipt the coupons had been attached to and threw it out. Then I forgot the whole thing.

The following February (1981) while we were dining at my in-laws, my mother-in-law casually asked us how we had invested the proceeds of the bonds. My wife and I did not have the faintest idea what she was talking about. "The $10,000 worth of bonds Dad and I gave you back in '72. When they matured, you returned them for the principal, didn't you?" Only then did we realize what we had done.

Immediately the thought came that nothing is ever really lost. And I remembered this statement from the Bible (Eccl. 3:14): "I know that, whatsoever God doeth, it shall be for ever: nothing can be put to it, nor any thing taken from it." I also recalled parts of an article I'd heard on a cassette tape produced by The Christian Science Publishing Society. One point the article made was that no matter how bad a mistake appears to be, there is a law of God applicable to the situation that will correct it.

I knew that since these bonds were rightfully ours, the principal from them was also rightfully ours, and that therefore nothing and no one could take it away from us. As a student of Christian Science, I prayed to know the right steps to take. That evening, all the way home, I stayed with my trust in God and determined to lean on His direction to bring a right conclusion to this situation.

When we arrived home, the thought came to me to look at the list of articles that I had put in the safe deposit box. Sure enough, I had listed the bonds and their series of numbers.

The next day I called a very good friend who is a stockbroker. The bonds had been issued by the New York City Housing Authority, so my friend told me to call their securities department. When I did, they informed me that I must know the exact housing development the bonds referred to, in order for them to be able to help me. I then called back my stockbroker friend. After hearing what the Housing Authority had said, he told me it was impossible to locate such bonds, because they were nonbearing and not in anyone's name. Expecting to find the bonds was hopeless, he said. But I was not discouraged in the least. I held to the fact that, in reality, a mistake can never overshadow spiritual law.

A few days later my friend called to tell me that a fellow stockbroker had been on the phone with the Housing Authority on the subject of outstanding bonds. And some of the bonds under discussion happened to be mine! My friend said it was luck—but I knew it really was God's law in operation! My gratitude was unbounded.

Then, since the paper work I had to go through to prove ownership of the bonds was enormous, I called a Christian Science practitioner for help in keeping my thought uplifted. It proved to be a trying time, but each step was taken with the utmost honesty, and with a prayer of gratitude to God. Finally the bonds were proved to be ours. The bonding company also told me that what had happened was practically "impossible."

Thanks be to God for Christ Jesus and for Christian Science, which teaches us to rely on God always.

TOBIAS A. WEISSMAN
Flushing, New York