OUR FIRST CONTACT challenged me to remain calm and cheerful. I had requested some information but was subjected to a barrage of profanity and turned away empty-handed. There was little I could do but walk back to my desk—mission unfulfilled.
I was completing the last days of a temporary office assignment for a company that had frequently called on me to help out. Though co-workers had told me such behavior was typical of this woman, my study of Christian Science had helped me see that no one is uncoperative or downright nasty by nature. I trusted the Psalmist's praise to God when he wrote, "What is man, that thou art mindful of him? ... For thou hast made him a little lower than the angels, and hast crowned him with glory and honour." Ps. 8:4, 5. I also knew that this characterization of the "man" the Psalmist referred to coincided with the spiritual fact that God created His children in the image and likeness of Himself, expressing His goodness in every way.
Weeks later I returned to the company for a three-month assignment, only to find that I would be reporting to this same woman on a daily basis. Initially these were not happy times. And yet I felt the power of divine Love, God Himself, urging a change. But it was a change in me—in my thinking, not in what this woman should be doing or how she should be behaving.
