ONE EVENING, I rushed down the front porch steps of a house where I had been working, stepped into a hole in the ground, and bent my ankle backward. I fell to the ground, and as I lay there, I immediately began to pray. The owner of the house, who was also a Christian Scientist, came outside, and I asked her to pray for me, too. We both prayed. After a while, the pain subsided enough that I was able to get up, finish the few things I had to do, and be on my way. But it was evident that the foot had been severely injured.
I was immediately helped as I recalled some Bible study I had been doing the day before. I'd been looking at the numerous times when God reassures us that He won't fail or forsake us. I took that to mean that God is an unfailing Principle, always available. I could lean on this Principle, and depend on it to support me.
I turned to the Bible for more inspiration and came across Psalms 31:15, which begins, "My times are in thy hand." Though I didn't immediately see how this passage related to my situation, I found it tremendously comforting, and I used this thought in my prayers about my ankle. A day or so later, I realized how it connected. Just prior to the accident, I'd been fretting that I'd been working far too late; then, after the accident, I thought that perhaps if I'd been more obedient to God's direction and had left work when I should have, I would never have suffered the injury. Then, I changed the way I was thinking about this. I affirmed that all my times were indeed under the control of divine Love, that He is always caring for me and keeping me in His perfect pattern for my life.
