Skip to footer

The spiritual waymarks that keep us safe

If we find ourselves in troubled waters – whether literally or figuratively – we can look to God for inspiration that guides and protects.

|
Anton Petrus/Moment/Getty Images
  • By Roger Whiteway

Christian Science Perspective audio edition
Loading the player...

There have been times when I’ve found myself in troubled waters, searching for a path that leads to a safe harbor. And I find I can rely on God’s waymarks to keep me in the deep-water channel of the Divine – and off the rocks of disappointment, fear, and despair.

In my United States Navy training as a midshipman, I learned how to identify channel markers, buoys, and lighthouses that enabled me to fix my position, to prevent going aground as I entered or departed a harbor.

“Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures” by Mary Baker Eddy, a follower of Jesus and the discoverer of Christian Science, is full of metaphysical channel markers that enable us to reestablish our position relative to God, the divine Principle of being. Here’s one that I go back to often: “According to divine Science, man is in a degree as perfect as the Mind that forms him” (p. 337). That Mind is God. And the “man,” that’s your and my eternal and safe spiritual selfhood.

As a boy, I loved body surfing. One day, looking for bigger waves, I kept moving farther out from shore and soon found myself pulled out to sea in a rip current. I was no match for the current, and I needed to find a way out.

I turned onto my back, looked up at the sky above, and began praying for inspiration – listening for the spiritual waymarks that I had been learning in the Christian Science Sunday School. One was that all things are possible to God.

God holds all of us, His spiritual sons and daughters, safe in His care at every moment. When we’re open to this spiritual fact, we experience it more readily in our daily lives.

Rather than start a frenzied search for the shoreline, I just stayed quiet, treasuring that idea that nothing is impossible to God. I have no idea how long I was floating on my back like this when suddenly I was lifted up on a wave and tumbled onto the sand, safe and sound.

Since that day, there have been other occasions when I’ve found myself in troubled waters, whether literally or figuratively. But by turning to God and listening for spiritual waymarks, I’ve always been directed to a path that leads to – or better said, reveals – our safety in God.

Adapted from the March 24, 2022, Christian Science Daily Lift podcast.

For a regularly updated collection of insights relating to the war in Ukraine from the Christian Science Perspective column, click here.

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 The spiritual waymarks that keep us safe
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/Commentary/A-Christian-Science-Perspective/2022/0407/The-spiritual-waymarks-that-keep-us-safe
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe