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Change for change's sake
For college I attended a huge university in the United States on a scholarship. To keep it, I had to maintain a certain grade point average. I was doing fine until a required speech course suddenly threatened my scholarship. I failed at writing my first speech!
Since I was a member of The Mother Church, I followed the Church Manual, written by the Church founder, Mary Baker Eddy. One By-Law requests that members subscribe to the Christian Science periodicals (see p. 44 ), which includes the international newspaper, The Christian Science Monitor. When it arrived by mail every day, I placed each copy of the paper in a pile behind my dorm room door. Being a college student, I felt too busy to read them, and the pile gradually reached the ceiling.
On the day that I failed my speech, I was so scared. I didn’t know where to turn for help in speech writing. In dejection, I returned to my room, shut the door, and stared at the tall stack of newspapers. Suddenly the words popped into my thought, “You could read those.”
I was aware that God, the source of individual and universal good, provides answers to our prayers before we even ask, so I obeyed this message. I took a Monitor from the top of the stack and worked my way down, reading one issue after another.
Suddenly, an article about how people fear change—just because change is taking place—struck me. The writer suggested that people must learn to replace the notion of change as being full of fear and anxiety, to seeing it as an opportunity for progress. Change is inevitable in human experience, and necessary for advancement.
The piece riveted me because I realized I’d been afraid of the effects of change—a dire, impending drop in my strong grade point average and thus the end of my financial supply. Reading this article served as a breakthrough moment. What I really needed was to shift how I would face and engage with this change.
I knew, as a Christian Scientist, that God was changeless and made all of us to reflect His unchanging goodness, so I could reflect that in whatever circumstance I was in. Right then, I started writing a new speech called “Change for the Sake of Change.” I drew on ideas from that article in the Monitor and referenced it.
At my next class I presented the new speech. The instructor said the change in my work was amazing. He then asked if he could include it in his doctoral dissertation as an example of a fine student speech. I signed his consent forms, received an A grade in the course, and retained my scholarship.
A verse in Proverbs that says, “Be not afraid of sudden fear” (3:25 ), might confirm that connecting with change, instead of being afraid of it, brings calm and immediate solutions.
Today, journalism is changing and The Christian Science Monitor is no exception. Its format is evolving from print editions to electronic online versions. However, I embrace the changes, rather than resent or resist them. Why? The Christian Science Monitor still broadens my understanding of the world. It keeps me aware of events that demand sincere prayer and appropriate action. No wonder after decades, I’m still a Monitor subscriber!
—Elizabeth Beall, Park City, Utah, US