I locked the door of my real estate office and prayed.
For more than four years my wife and I had struggled with a limited income. Though we lived modestly, we had trouble paying our bills. At that time I had only one quality property listed for sale. We had prayed diligently to understand what God would have us do. We had seen some good results from our prayers. Even so, we had yet to experience their full benefit. Now I decided to put aside that struggle and devote all my prayers to church. I was serving as First Reader of my Christian Science branch church and felt a great welling up of love for church and for the opportunities my wife and I had had to serve it, both locally and on a broader scale.
For three weeks or more, I kept my office closed and I prayed, using the opening seven words of Mary Baker Eddy's spiritual definition of Church in her book Science and Health as the basis of my prayers. The part of this definition in which those words appear reads: "Church. The structure of Truth and Love; whatever rests upon and proceeds from divine Principle." Science and Health, p. 583
