Prayer when disaster threatens

A Christian Science perspective.

There has been a striking number of destructive earthquakes this year, including the most recent one in Mexico. After Chile experienced a strong quake in February, the Hawaiian Islands, where my son and his family live, were placed under a tsunami alert. Hearing this, I immediately began to pray.

Opening the Bible to the book of Psalms, I read this inspiring verse: “The Lord on high is mightier than the noise of many waters, yea, than the mighty waves of the sea” (93:4). I also found this statement, written by the founder of the Monitor, Mary Baker Eddy, helpful: “The waters will be pacified, and Christ will command the wave” (“Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures,”
p. 570).

I continued my prayers with a firm conviction that our Father-Mother God governs the universe and that He-She is the only power, the only action, the only Creator, the only Mind. Science and Health refers to God as divine Principle “which launched the earth in its orbit and said to the proud wave, ‘Thus far and no farther’ ” (p. 124). In our prayers to still all kinds of storms and chaos, we can affirm this activity of divine Principle to be true for ourselves and for all people.

Prayer helped my husband and me a number of years ago in California when an earthquake of considerable impact shook our house and awakened us in the dark. Our first impulse was to cover our two younger children with our bodies for their safety. Then we said the Lord’s Prayer aloud while the earth rolled and our house shook and rattled and the roof tiles clattered. Our background of turning immediately to the Bible and the comforting truths taught in Christian Science eliminated fear.

There followed a few days of tremors, but we continued to hold in calm trust to the fact that God was All-in-all and filled all space; therefore, there was no place for evil to operate. We read and repeated these verses from the first book of Kings: “A great and strong wind rent the mountains ... but the Lord was not in the wind: and after the wind an earthquake; but the Lord was not in the earthquake: And after the earthquake a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire: and after the fire a still small voice” (19:11, 12). The Bible is a spiritual guide and has answers to every concern. This was a firm reminder that God is not in destructive forces, but can be found in the “still small voice” that can guide each of us when disaster threatens.

Today is safe in God’s keeping. He embraces all His creation in the irradiance of Life. All that is really going on is what God knows, and that is spiritual. As the 91st Psalm states: “There shall no evil befall thee, neither shall any plague come nigh thy dwelling. For he shall give his angels charge over thee, to keep thee in all thy ways.”

Everyone, everywhere can turn to God; He is an ever-present help.

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