Article May 28, 2012 Issue

The Bible – a series of encounters with God

More than a history book, the Bible contains the revelation of spiritual laws applicable today.

Alessandra P. Colombini

First published in the Portuguese edition of The Herald of Christian Science, O Arauto da Ciência Cristã.

When adults think of childhood, they generally associate it with happiness, play, dreams, and an absence of worry. But that’s not the whole picture. A less rosy side of childhood is fear—fear of the unknown, fear of things a child can’t understand (and there are lots of those).

This was my usual state of mind as a young girl until I got to know the Bible and, with it, the power of God, the power of good. In the Bible I met characters who, on a regular basis, overcame fear. For example, I learned about Moses and Elijah. Moses fled Egypt in fear, after killing an Egyptian; but he had the courage to return in order to demand that Pharaoh free his people, the Hebrews, from slavery (see Exodus 2 and 3). The prophet Elijah fled in fear of Queen Jezebel, who had vowed to kill him. But, soon after, he again took up his mission as a prophet among kings and students (see I Kings 19).

What led these men to do an about-face and achieve victory over fear? It was their encounters with God. At the burning bush, Moses gained a clearer perception of God as the “I AM” (Exodus 3:14). Elijah better understood God through his experience of hearing the “still small voice” on Mount Horeb (I Kings 19:12). By reading the Bible, I, too, was able to find God, even as a child. Through the Bible stories I encountered God. And my successive encounters with the heavenly Father in the Bible helped me conquer fear from then on, through the rest of my childhood and teen years and into adulthood.

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