Finding Comfort

After hearing of a mass murder, I walked away from the television set, overwhelmed by the pain and horror facing the victims' families. I wanted to do something; but there were so many families needing to be comforted, and they were so far away. It all seemed too big, too impossible for any one person to be of help.

Almost immediately, though, I remembered that God was there. The Bible records this in Jeremiah: "Do not I fill heaven and earth? saith the Lord" (23:24). God is present everywhere. His love is abundantly present, not just in heaven, but in all the earth. God's love must be enough, big enough, tender enough, to meet each human need. God was right where those families were, fulfilling another promise from the Bible, this time from Revelation: "And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away" (21:4).

God is always speaking to all of us in our hearts. Communicating His presence and power, He is telling us what is true. From this we discern what is not true. Christian Science, discovered by Mary Baker Eddy, teaches that this ongoing communication from God is the action of His Christ. As recorded in Mrs. Eddy's book Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, "Christ is the true idea voicing good, the divine message from God to men speaking to the human consciousness" (p. 332). That communication never fails, and comes straight from God. So Christ was there even then, I realized, speaking within the consciousness of each of those people so far away from me, but dear to God. Whatever healing messages were most needed, God was imparting them. Those people could and would receive what would be individually comforting.

In the gospel record, Christ Jesus repeatedly instructed that life is eternal. His own resurrection proved that no hatred or physical wounding could destroy him. Nothing could destroy God, who had given Jesus life. In his position as the Son of God, Jesus certainly knew this. His work, his purpose, was to teach us that Life is eternal. In other words, God is eternal. And we live in God.

God's Christ continues to convey the message of eternal Life. I became more sure that day that Christ was telling each one the Bible promise that God is Life itself and so the life of His child can never be destroyed. God's Christ could and would wipe individual consciousness clean of memories of death and destruction. It could and would replace those images with clear views of God's love embracing each one affected. I needed no personal knowledge of what would specifically comfort the people in that situation. But I was absolutely certain that God is great in His love and perfect in His comforting.

I spent time remembering that all of the clamor of pain, horror, and anger couldn't possibly drown out God's messages to each man and woman and child. God would be heard. Each of us, including the victims, had the capacity to hear and respond to God, and thus must be comforted.

As I prayed more, I reasoned that because God was always present and always infinitely powerful and wise in His government, we could trust that neither this tragedy nor any other actually had any place in God's will, in His plan, or in His universe. It had to be true that, because God was helping me to understand this, He was in some way enabling each heart to comprehend this as well.

After this I was grateful that I could trust all of those individuals to God's care. The presence of the Christ had comforted me in my own life at the time of my mother's accidental death. Very soon after hearing the news, and reaching out to God in prayer, I was absolutely at peace -- not mistakenly or theoretically, but in the certainty that my mother was spiritual, a child of God forever, in no way hurt or damaged. I had such a conviction of her continuity and her love for me that I had no lingering feelings of loss or grief.

The Christ had helped me in my great need. I knew it could help everyone. I knew I could trust each of those faraway people to God's care.

Testimonies of Christian Science healing appear in a monthly magazine, The Christian Science Journal.