On a trip to Ghana, West Africa, to visit church members, my colleagues and I learned about a traditional symbol of a knot that no one can untie. No one, that is, except God. The symbol is called “Gye nyame” (jeh N-yah-mee), which our Ghanaian hosts translated as “except God,” or “only God.”
In Africa, as in every part of the world, problems that have defied solution for centuries confront you. Yet everywhere we went, we met people who told of their joy at discovering, through humble persistent prayer, that divine power does untie knots of corruption, disease, superstition, violence, and poverty.
Several Christian Science practitioners, who give their full time to healing others, said very few of their patients pay them in money, although many give them food and other practical things. One told us he recently had no money to pay for necessities for his children. He prayed with the certainty that God had an answer and would direct him. Soon, people, who had previously said they couldn’t, gave him what he needed. Because he doesn’t have a conventional job to support his family, this meek man said he would be the laughingstock of his village—except for the demonstrations of God’s power his neighbors see.
