I WAS AT MY WIT'S END. I had completed all the orders for my small floral business. No new orders. No promise of orders. No money. No family available to borrow from. As a single parent with no other means of support, I sat down to wait for my three teenagers, who were about to come home from school. There I sat on the sofa in my living room frozen with fear. More than that, I felt entirely alone. Each thought of what could happen to me and my family tried to push out any clarity, any real solution.
On the coffee table sat a copy of Science and Health. As a new student of Christian Science, I loved its promise. But at this moment, all that was filling my head were those negative experiences that had pervaded my past. I opened the book anyway and my eyes fell on this passage: "As in Jesus' time, so to-day, tyranny and pride need to be whipped out of the temple, and humility and divine Science to be welcomed in" (p. 142).
It struck a note. I could think of my consciousness as a temple of thought. God's thoughts. Those negative scenarios needed to be whipped out—removed, banished, expunged from my thinking. And for the moment, they were. My receptivity allowed a beloved Bible verse to be invited in: "It is a good thing to give thanks unto the Lord, and to sing praises unto thy name, O most High" (Ps. 92:1).
