Gardens hold a special place for Christian Science practitioner and teacher George Millar. Not just the one at his current Twickenham home on the river Thames, but one that stretches way back to his childhood in Australia.
When George was a boy, his older sister woke up, unable to get out of bed. She was paralyzed. The polio epidemic was widespread in Melbourne, and all schools were closed. A doctor came to the house and diagnosed her with the disease, saying he would return shortly to make arrangements for hospital. In a family where Christian Science had gone back three generations, "Mum told me to go into the garden and pray," George recalls. "I was very afraid. But since we'd just had a lesson in Sunday School on the importance of obedience, that's what I did."
George doesn't remember exactly how he prayed. "Maybe it was the Lord's Prayer, or 'the scientific statement of being' from Science and Health, or simply 'God, help my sister!' " But he does remember that on that dreary grey day as he sat in the garden, he suddenly looked around to see that it was full of light —majestic in its beauty. "We didn't have much of a garden at all," he adds, "since my father was the gardener and he was away at war." In that moment he was no longer afraid, and knew his sister was healed. He raced into the house to tell his mother, just as his sister came skipping out of her room, completely well.
