Gardens and pests

 AMOS – Minor Prophet

A bible scholar visited Brisbane some years ago. One of the questions he asked was, “When did the last prophet live?” Remembering the Glossary definition* in Science and Health by Mary Baker Eddy, I replied, “All of us here.” I got something right in those classes!

*The definition reads, “Prophet. A spiritual seer; disappearance of material sense before the conscious facts of spiritual Truth” (p. 593:4).

I don’t find Amos a riveting study, though I did find a summary of the book online at https://www.biblestudytools.com/amos/. I found it very good.

Today I read up to Amos 4:9 in the King James Version. This verse reads, 

“I have smitten you with blasting and mildew: when your gardens and your vineyards and your fig trees and your olive trees increased, the palmerworm devoured them: yet have ye not returned unto me, saith the Lord.”

This reminded me of a Christian Science lecture given at our church by George Millar** (an Australian who introduced Geoffrey Barratt** to Christian Science). George had talked with a practitioner about the pests in his garden; perhaps it was aphids. The practitioner recommended that he read Mrs. Eddy’s Unity of Good, commenting that he was the biggest pest in his garden.

Eddy writes Un. 52:16:

What say you of evil?

God is not the so-called ego of evil; for evil, as a supposition, is the father of itself , — of the material world, the flesh, and the devil. From this falsehood arise the self-destroying elements of this world, its unkind forces, its tempests, lightnings, earthquakes, poisons, rabid beasts, fatal reptiles, and mortals [my emphasis]. 

Joyce Voysey

**Read an interview with George Millar published in The Christian Science Journal of June 2010. The interview begins:

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...