After the Second World War, when Europe was occupied by Allied troops, housing was scarce. After the breakup of my marriage I was living in a tiny apartment with my young son, mother, and sister. Although I did translation work, my income appeared to condemn me to stay in our cramped quarters.

Then I learned about Christian Science. A colleague was dying in the hospital from severe bullet wounds. The doctors held out no hope for his survival—yet in less than a week he was completely healed through Christian Science treatment. Witnessing this dramatic event set my life on a completely new course. My whole outlook underwent radical changes.

First and foremost, through my study of this Science, I discovered that with God, indeed all things are possible. I realized that the sense of limitation I had accepted as a matter of course didn’t have to be a permanent condition. I was gaining a Bible-based understanding of myself as the image and likeness of God. This change in thought lifted my expectations; my health and standard of living improved considerably.

Solutions to life’s problems, I learned, were to be found in the realm of spiritual ideas, not in human reason or circumstances. Instead of identifying myself as a material being, competing for limited resources with other material beings, I (and everyone) was spiritual and had an unbreakable relationship with God.

And I could prove this to be true through obedience to God’s direction, loving others, exercising intelligence and spiritual discernment, and childlike trust in God who is Love.

This omnipotent, divine Love indeed has “infinite resources with which to bless mankind,” as Mary Baker Eddy wrote in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, her definitive work on Christian Science.

Looking back on how Christian Science brought so much good into my life, I can see several phases of spiritual development. First, through reading Science and Health, I learned how to pray. Not prayer as petition, like asking God to give me an apartment of my own, but prayer that was based on spiritually understanding God as my Life, as Truth or reality.

I perceived Jesus’ command, “Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free,” as an actual statement of fact, not an abstract spiritual hope. And I expected truth to set me free from these feelings of limitation.

Second, with this new spiritual understanding, my character was transformed over time, and I learned to cherish the spiritual identity of myself and others, and lived it in daily life. I became more loving and patient, more respectful of others. This brought more harmony into my home environment.

Last but not least, I began to make full use of my God-given talents and capacities as I felt divinely directed. I learned to trust God’s guidance and obey, even when it wasn’t clear why I should do so.

And then I was inspired by God to put half my salary into a bank account each month. At first my response was “No way!” I had always needed my whole salary to pay the bills with nothing left over at the end of the month. I didn’t think we could live on half of my income.

But the message from God did not waver and at long last I complied. And you know what? Living on half a salary, which at first seemed so impossible, taught me how to get the most for my money. I learned to enjoy being frugal; to be both creative and selective in how I spent it without lowering our standard of living.

After I started to put money in the bank each month, an opportunity opened up for me to become a tour guide on weekends for the droves of Italian tourists flooding the city of Salzburg, one of Europe’s most popular tourist spots.

My continued prayers made me more conscious that God was my real employer in the sense that I am His idea and—like everyone, actually—live to express His nature and qualities. This change led me to be more conscientious in my work performance, and I was rewarded with unexpected and significant pay raises. While all of this amounted to much, it was still only a fraction of what I thought would be needed to buy an apartment.

Then a family friend who worked for the government told me that Austria was beginning reconstruction of the bombsites left from World War II and that he was in charge of several apartment complexes to be built in Salzburg. The conditions were extraordinary: two consecutive downpayments and a 70-year mortgage.

He mentioned an amount of money and said, “If you had that much in the bank right now, I could sign you up for a three-room apartment tomorrow.” You guessed it! It was exactly what I had in the bank at that time.

The next day, when I arrived at the lawyer’s office, ready to sign a contract, I was in for a surprise. After the first down payment, which I had, the second down payment was to be made six months later. This required a much larger sum, which I could not possibly accumulate by taking half of my salary each month.

As I pondered my next move, I felt an uncommon surge of confidence that God had brought me this far and that He was going to take me all the way. I should just trust. And I did. I signed the contract.

During the months that followed I often wrestled with fear and guilt, feeling foolish for concluding such an uncertain deal. What if I could not pay at the appointed time? When I turned to God during such moments, however, He invariably assured me that all was well; I had nothing to worry about. As it turned out, using a Biblical analogy, the money to make the second payment came to me from “the fish’s mouth,” a source, that is, whose existence I could never have anticipated, and decidedly by the grace of God.

I learned that the Allied Forces occupying Austria—French, British, Russian, and American—had agreed to leave my country in that year, 1955, and to give the occupied territory neutral status. This was a historic moment.

But my first reaction was: “There goes my job,” as I’d been working for the Americans as an interpreter and translator. Still, I remained calm. I already knew that when God closes one door, He opens another. There surely would be another job waiting for me. And there was.

And what’s more, the American government announced it was giving employees severance payments—which gave me the money I needed for my future apartment.

And so when I meet people today who are perhaps discouraged about employment, housing, or other situations, I assure them that God’s infinite resources are there for them, just as they were for me. What cannot God do?

Infinite resources:

Science and Health
60:29-31

King James Bible
John 8:32
Matt. 17:27