Skip to footer

The power that remains when the hurricane leaves

Atlantic communities, particularly the Bahamas, have been left reeling in the wake of Hurricane Dorian. But even when things seem hopeless, nothing can take away God’s limitless love, which arms us with peace, strength, comfort, and inspiration.

  • By Liz Butterfield Wallingford

Christian Science Perspective audio edition
Loading the player...

It’s been heartbreaking to see reports and videos of Hurricane Dorian’s devastating path in the Atlantic. Such disasters lend themselves to feelings of helplessness, hopelessness, and despair.

And yet, those reports also point to something else entirely. Fortitude. Selflessness. Courage. Grace. Compassion.

This is no small thing. These qualities are a sign of something more enduring than ferocious winds and impervious to overpowering floods – a power that brings out the best in us, even in the worst of times.

The divine Science of Christ reveals that this power is our creator, God, who is ever-present good, and our capacity to feel and express such qualities stems from our true nature as God’s children. Grit can only get us so far. But as offspring of the Divine, we’re so much more than mortals whose compassion and courage can be exhausted. We’re the spiritual expression of God’s limitless love, of unending divine Life, of a truly compassionate power.

There’s a lot in the world to remind us of what’s unstable. But here’s some food for thought that takes things in a different direction. “Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures” by Mary Baker Eddy, who discovered Christian Science, explains, “The relations of God and man, divine Principle and idea, are indestructible in Science ...” (pp. 470-471).

Not “susceptible to storms of some sort,” not “solid for as long as the levees or boards hold out,” but straight-up indestructible. Established and sustained by our divine Parent, our lives can’t be broken, our strength can’t be swept away, our peace can’t be blown about.

We can reverently pray to know that even those lost to the devastating blow of this storm are indestructible, as is the deepest sense of home of those made temporarily homeless by it. Because we are children of God, our life is in divine Spirit, not confined to a material body. Knowing this can temper and even help heal grief.

And spiritually understood, our home is a spiritual awareness of God, in whom we “live, and move, and have our being,” according to the Bible (Acts 17:28). We become conscious of this abode in divine Spirit as we pray to understand our spiritual nature. Many people have reported in magazines on Christian Science published by the Monitor’s publisher how perceiving this spiritual reality has helped them find solutions to the tragic loss of a home.

Each and every receptive heart can feel this assurance of the Christ, God’s tender, empowering message of love. God’s goodness and care remain intact, even when so much in the world around us does not. Nothing is more powerful than God, infinite Love, divine Truth.

Even the smallest glimpse of this spiritual reality shows us that we are not doomed to interminable chaos, that there is a solid basis for hope and progress. It brings to light more of the divine goodness and safety that are ever present. And it brings out in us the peace, strength, and selflessness that are our birthright as God’s children, helping us realize that we have all we need to deal with the issues at hand.

And that’s something that can never be taken from us.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.
editor@csmonitor.com
Subscribe
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 The power that remains when the hurricane leaves
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/Commentary/A-Christian-Science-Perspective/2019/0909/The-power-that-remains-when-the-hurricane-leaves
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe