Twelve years ago it looked as if my small engineering consultancy business was about to be bankrupted through no fault of my own. A client who owed me a large sum of money had been unable to pay because of delays in funding for their project. This put me under a lot of pressure, as I had borrowed from the bank to pay staff, school fees, etc. It seemed that my wife and I might be forced to sell our home if we were not paid, and the continuity of the firm was under threat.
I was concerned about all this, yet confident that things would work out. I have been a dedicated Christian Scientist all of my life and have been able through prayer to find solutions to a wide variety of problems (for example, see “Spiritual insights and structural engineering,” Christian Science Sentinel, July 28,1997, pp. 16–18).
When things looked really bleak, I was out running one day and suddenly collapsed with a heart attack. I was taken to a hospital and eventually had an operation to remove a blockage. Throughout this experience my family did all they could to support me, and I kept praying for myself. After I no longer had a physical problem, I still had to overcome a sense of guilt and failure as a Christian Scientist. In my copy of the King James Bible, chapter 3 of Genesis, which relates the fall of Adam and Eve and their banishment from the garden of Eden, features the page heading “Man’s shameful fall and punishment.” I had the gloomy sense that this phrase applied directly to me.
