A few weeks ago my daughter and I needed to go shopping for fabric for making a skirt, and she had specific ideas. We planned to go shopping on the Saturday afternoon, but other plans ran late. On the Sunday we managed to track down a fabric shop that was open, but our visit there didn’t yield results. We finally managed to find something satisfactory at a local department store. I was very pleased that we’d managed to tick that task off the list.
However, at the end of the next week, she explained that the quantity of fabric we had bought was not enough for a full circle skirt which is what she had decided to make. This time, she decided to shop online. On the Saturday she spent what seemed like hours pouring over the catalogues of online shops, and although she could find plenty more fabric, it all looked rather similar to school uniform fabric, which wasn’t really the idea.
That morning I had been listening to the recording of the Wednesday Meeting, during which the congregation had sung the hymn ‘Feed My Sheep’- by Mary Baker Eddy. The words of this hymn had penetrated my consciousness, and I could also hear others in the family singing snatches of it as they went about their tasks. I began to help my daughter with her online search, looking for more shops with a wider selection of fabrics. Eventually I came across a review of fabric shops across the UK, which mentioned a particular street in London which is known for its multitude of fabric shops. I looked at the clock and at the train times, and realised we could make it into London and to this street and manage a few hours of shopping before the shops closed. We rushed off to catch the train.
As we started out on this journey, we decided to pray together, and the words of the hymn that we’d been singing earlier, ‘Shepherd, show me how to go’, seemed most appropriate.
As we got closer to our destination we laughed together when we realised the relevant pun as the words continue … ‘how to gather, how to sow’ and we had fun finding more words that elevated our fabric mission in a spiritual way.
It was hardly surprising to note that the destination station was called Shepherds Bush and had two sheep as its emblem. The first shop had some interesting possibilities, but we traipsed our way through fifteen or twenty shops before finally agreeing to go back to the first shop before heading home. There was the very first - or almost the very first - roll of fabric we’d seen that afternoon, which may not have been exactly as she’d envisioned her ’turquoise ombré', but which was a lovely wooded interpretation on that theme. We purchased a suitable quantity, and headed home very grateful and happy.
A lesson for us in trusting God and trusting our hymns and our prayers. I am so grateful to Mary Baker Eddy for discovering Christian Science, for her hymns, for Jesus, his healing work, and for our Church and Sunday School.