WHEN 240 volts of electric power pulsed through Sue Scrivens’ body, pinning her to the lawn she’d been about to mow, she thought, “This is it – I’m going to die”.

Some days before, the wire leading from the electric mower had got broken. Sue thought she had mended it carefully enough to be safe and that it wouldn’t matter that she hadn’t had any insulating tape to finish off the job properly. But unknown to her, the two strands of wire inside the cable were able to touch each other. As she switched on to begin mowing, 240 volts earthed themselves through Sue’s body. The huge shock hurled her against a heavy solid wooden bird table, which split her head open.

“The next thing I knew I found myself on the ground, shaking violently all over, blood pouring down my face. The index finger of my left hand was stuck to the live wire and electricity was pulsing through me. I tried to move my right hand to pull the live wire off but I found I couldn’t move that hand either - in fact I couldn’t move anything at all, it was like being glued to the ground.”

There was no one in the house to switch off the power and nobody knew Sue was lying there stuck, seconds away from death.

Sue had become a Christian two years before and now she cried out to Jesus to help her. Immediately, she felt life coming back into her right hand.

“Suddenly, I was able to move it across to pull the cable off my left hand and the shock stopped. I walked shakily into the house and rang my daughter who called an ambulance. When the ambulance men heard what had happened they said I was very silly and very lucky to be alive. I agree about the ‘silly’ bit - I knew I should have used proper tape and bought myself a circuit-breaker. But I know that it wasn’t ‘luck’ that saved me, but the power of Jesus.

“I can’t thank Him enough for coming to my rescue. We may not be able to see Him - but His power is real”.

A spokeswoman from RoSPA, the national safety organisation, says that the majority of people who accidentally cut through the cables of garden appliances are saved from harm because they do not actually touch the live end of the cable when the cable is severed. But every year one or two people are killed in their gardens by electric shock, because, like Sue, part of their body actually connects with the live current.