Grateful for God's protection

Dean G. Wolfe

There was not much shade as my wife and I hiked around an island in the San Francisco Bay along with our trusty trail boots, backpacks, and water bottles.

Although we were having a wonderful time, it was not lost on my wife that I had a growing aversion to being in direct sunlight on hot days. And that day was no exception. Basically, I was whining about it. We’re from Ontario, Canada, and at that time we were living in much sunnier San Francisco, which had been an adjustment for me. Frankly, I preferred cloudy days.

After going to bed that evening, I woke up with a headache, feeling nauseous, and my skin was hot—burned to a glowing red. I recalled once when I was in my early teens having similar symptoms. At that time, I’d spoken with a Christian Science practitioner over the phone and requested prayerful help. I recall lying down for a most refreshing nap and waking up feeling completely well. This memory reassured me that healing didn’t have to take a long time, but I still felt unwell. So I went into my living room to pray.

For me, prayer always centers around the truths of the Bible. Christian Science illumines these profound truths, making them practical. Over the years, I’ve appreciated how the complete statement of this healing system is found in Science and Health by Mary Baker Eddy. So I sat down with my copies of two wonderful books, the Bible and Science and Health.

The starting point for my prayer is always that God is Love (see I John 4:8). God is our Father-Mother, the divine Parent, and we are all, in truth, His children: God’s image and likeness (see Genesis 1:26, 31). God is also referred to as the All-in-all, the divine Spirit, Mind. So being God’s image and likeness, we are, in fact, spiritual beings.

This statement stood out to me: “Christian Science brings to the body the sunlight of Truth, which invigorates and purifies. Christian Science acts as an alterative, neutralizing error with Truth” (Science and Health, p. 162).

I realized then and there that I had been making a god, of sorts, out of the sun. I was blaming it for my discomforts, and fearing it for what it could do to me. What I needed to do was to spiritualize my sense of the sun and sunlight and what they stood for metaphysically.

Rather than mentally complain over discomforts, I needed to see and affirm God’s creation in its true light: God didn’t create a harmful universe. He wasn’t the source of illness or nuisance. The sun stands for the comforting presence of divine Soul shining on man. It simply couldn’t be the plan of a loving all-powerful creator to harm His own creation.

The symptoms of illness, as well as the burned feeling on my skin, quickly vanished. I felt better right away and mentally enveloped in a warmth of understanding and connection to a loving God. That was the end of it. I had a good night’s rest and a new respect for God’s good universe.

I’d like to share another instance when I felt God’s healing protection. When I was a teenager, I was walking home from my part-time job late one weekend evening. My trek was mostly through well-populated neighborhoods. But one stretch was on a deserted section of road beside an empty field. It was there that I noticed a tall figure on the sidewalk coming from the opposite direction. Soon I saw the figure was a tall man. I deliberately moved to the right on the sidewalk leaving ample room for him to pass me. But he made an obviously deliberate move to my side of the sidewalk. His body language screamed “confrontation”!

It very quickly came to me that I needed to pray as Jesus taught: “Love your enemies” (Luke 6:27). It’s not that I assumed all strangers were my “enemies,” but this situation felt so uncomfortable, and I sensed it needed that kind of love.

Then I realized that this man was a child of God as much as I was. We were brothers, not enemies. I felt a transformation take place in my thought and whole being. I held this tight in thought, and kept my composure even though the man was bearing down on me, in my path.

At the last possible second, he moved out of the way and I strode right on by without looking back. I kept cherishing the spiritual truths I mentioned and remember feeling tremendous gratitude to God for the rest of the walk—rejoicing in the power of Love.

Dean G. Wolfe
Victoria, British Columbia, Canada

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