Article April 2, 2012 Issue

Rays of comfort

Tom Fuller

Have you ever seen crepuscular rays—those beautiful rays that radiate out from the sun at dawn and dusk? Sometimes, they’re called “Jacob’s Ladder.” My daughters call them the “heaven effect,” and indeed, one morning, God comforted me through this very image.

But first, a word about a sun metaphor. Malachi promises that “the Sun of righteousness arise[s] with healing in his wings” (4:2). To me, this illustrates how God’s children are related to God and to each other. Since we are joined with divine Soul, as rays are joined to the sun, we can really know each other only by looking to our common source. Science and Health explains, “The universe reflects and expresses the divine substance or Mind; therefore God is seen only in the spiritual universe and spiritual man, as the sun is seen in the ray of light which goes out from it” (p. 300). Mary Baker Eddy also wrote, “If we say that the sun stands for God, then all his rays collectively stand for Christ, and each separate ray for men and women” (The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany, p. 344).

God sends angels, His messages (the word angel comes from the Greek angelos, meaning “messenger”), in delightfully diverse forms. And so, one morning when the sun had just begun to peek through the trees, I received the exact message I needed. Here’s how it happened.