In early spring, a prize ash tree over 40 years old (we didn't know it was so valuable until someone who knows trees said so) started dying. To this tree expert, the curling brown leaves looked like trouble. He told us this tree was on its way out, that it had some special disease. "You're going to have to cut it down", he predicted. Sure enough, the leaves came raining down over the next few days.
Another person who was fertilizing some shrubbery about this time said he knew of something he could try on the tree, to see if the condition could be arrested. He tried it; it didn't work at all.
Losing this tree was the last thing we wanted, as it provides such shade in our hot summers and is beautiful to look at. So, we set to work in Christian Science.
What do I mean by this? We began praying from the standpoint that there is no disease in God's universe, that His universe is the only one there is. Speaking for myself, I worked metaphysically to see that right where the material senses reported a hopeless condition, right there was a vibrant, healthy, un-diseased expression of divine Mind, God, the Creator of all things.
Something Mary Baker Eddy says in her book, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, came to thought: "Jesus beheld in Science the perfect man ,who appeared to him where sinning mortal man appears to mortals. In this perfect man the Saviour saw God's own likeness, and this correct view of man healed the sick." This is on pages 476 and 477.
Well, if the correct view of man removes things needing healing, then the same principle applies to this tree, I reasoned. My job is to see the opposite of what would appear to be going on, to hold to the spiritual fact governing the situation.
And do you know, it wasn't 2 weeks until the nearly bare branches began showing light green baby leaves! The tree began leafing out again, and this just doesn't happen we're told. Now it's full and lovely and just as it should be.
Just one more proof of what Christianly scientific understanding can do in our daily experience.
