Article November 14, 2011 Issue

Spiritual alertness on a trip abroad

By Lauren Wienecke

Earlier this year I traveled to Brazil as part of a college study abroad program. One night, as our program leaders were going over travel arrangements for the next day and giving us important information, I kept having an intense feeling that I needed to go back to my room. Finally, after ignoring it for a few moments, I obeyed the command and walked out of the meeting. Later I realized that this feeling was a spiritual intuition, an angel message from God.

I was sharing my room with our abroad leader, so a lot of the money for the program, passport and visa information, and other personal items were all inside our room. When I got there the door was open, the lights were on, and our bags were not in the same place we had left them. Papers were spread out over my professor’s bed, and water had been poured on top of them. I couldn’t find my purse anywhere, and it had my passport, credit card, and cash inside it. It was such a weird situation to walk into, and I was really afraid that things had been stolen from our room.

Then, almost immediately the calming truth that “God is the only Cause and Creator”—a paraphrase of one of the subjects of the Christian Science Bible Lesson—came to me. In fact, it was all I could think about; I clung to it as tightly as I could. I knew that God, good, was the only power or cause, and that nothing else could be present in my experience. This truth calmed me.

About the author

Lauren Wienecke is a senior at Principia College in Illinois. She plays on the women’s soccer team and is the Second Reader for the college’s Christian Science organization.

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