Article August 12, 1985 Issue

Traveling without terror

THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR

The events of a recent major hijacking alert us to the importance of dealing with terrorism in a specific way through prayer. For some, a major concern is travel. Are some places safer than others? Is one always at the mercy of chance, timing, circumstance?

One summer a few years ago we were traveling in a European country where there were almost daily threats from terrorists to bomb trains and stations. As we boarded a train there, I expressed some fear to my husband that things seemed out of control, that at any time we might be blown up. He gently reminded me I had felt perfectly safe in the country we had just left, because its language and customs were similar to our own. I saw that I needed to be clear about my own and every individual's divine right to safety.

It was not a matter of one country or even one mode of transportation being safer than another. There was a need to realize that there is only one God, one divine Mind, in control of His creation. I had to see that no matter what the situation, God's man—and that's the actual identity of us all—is incapable of destroying or being destroyed. I prayed to see that love of God and man, not hatred, was the law of being, in operation. As I prayed, all fear of traveling left me, and our journey was harmonious.

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