Skip to footer

Safe everywhere

A Christian Science perspective: Turning to the invariably and unchangeably good God can bring protection and a fearless sense of safety.

  • By Norm Bleichman

Recently I was prompted to think back on my year of military service in Vietnam. I was stationed a few miles south of the Demilitarized Zone, and every night for the first several months of my tour, our base endured rocket attacks launched from beyond the DMZ. Without warning, an incoming round would explode nearby, and we would scramble for shelter in an adjacent bunker. It was nerve-racking to say the least.

Yet throughout that time, I actually didn’t feel a sense of impending disaster for me or for the men on the base. I owed that calmness to the understanding I’d gained from the Bible, and from the teachings of Christian Science, of the overarching protecting power of knowing that we “live, and move, and have our being” in God’s presence (Acts 17:28). This divine presence of Spirit is referred to in the Bible by such symbols as refuge, fortress, feathers, wings, and shield (see, for instance, Psalms 91). And we were indeed protected from the “terror by night” throughout those attacks, which, after a period, stopped altogether.

With today’s media daily reporting acts of violence, terrorism, and natural disasters, many ask, “So where is God? Where is that preserver of life and peace?”

It’s a reasonable question. To our material sense of things danger seems to be rampant. But that’s led me to reaffirm that God, Spirit, is not any more distant or absent in these times than during those chaotic nights on my military base. Location and situation have no effect on the presence of God, the divine Spirit that holds in safety its spiritual creation – which includes every one of us. So even when we’re faced with fear or danger, turning to that invariably and unchangeably good God, and understanding our true nature as the spiritual expressions of God’s goodness, can bring protection and a fearless sense of safety.

Bottom line – we can trust that the promises in the Bible are not faded relics of a time past, but contemporary signposts of a safety that is still present and reliable today.

A version of this article aired on the Dec. 7, 2017, Christian Science Daily Lift podcast.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Enjoying this content?
Explore the power of gratitude with the Thanksgiving Bible Lesson – free online through December 31, 2024. Available in English, French, German, Spanish, and (new this year) Portuguese.
Read the Thanksgiving Lesson
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

QR Code to Safe everywhere
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/Commentary/A-Christian-Science-Perspective/2018/0109/Safe-everywhere
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe