Gone just like that

In these uncertain times, fear can sometimes overshadow our hope, joy, and peace. But as the author of this poem experienced, the unfailing light and warmth of divine Love comforts “like nothing else,” dispelling fear.

Christian Science Perspective audio edition
Loading the player...

There it seemed to be, fear
riding roughshod over my hopes
(it felt like an eternity), asserting
itself as filling all space,
as all-ruling, as all – period,
when a pinprick of faint
light pierced the black.
It was this: that darkness in
a closet shut for a minute or
centuries flees all the same
the moment light floods in.

Clinging to that small light-idea
took the wind out of fear’s
seeming sails and opened to me
divine Love’s unstinting warmth
pouring out endlessly – darkness
is not darkness to its luminosity.

So fear is not found in God’s infinity.

At that moment I was sure Love
was everywhere present, a
peerless tenderness comforting
like nothing else, and the fear
was swept away.

God is light, and in him is no darkness at all.
I John 1:5

Editor’s note: As a public service, all the Monitor’s coronavirus coverage is free, including articles from this column. There’s also a special free section of JSH-Online.com on a healing response to the coronavirus. There is no paywall for any of this coverage.

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.

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.

QR Code to Gone just like that
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/Commentary/A-Christian-Science-Perspective/2020/0501/Gone-just-like-that
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe