New perspectives through pauses
When traveling, have you ever paused to be grateful for a railroad station, or a rest stop by the side of the highway? They’re good places to stop, relax, enjoy the view, or get something to eat and drink—all in the knowledge that this is just a temporary stop on the way to the destination. Such a stop often leads us to some great new experience!
Many years ago at a Wednesday evening testimony meeting I attended in a Christian Science church in New York City, a gentleman got up and related an account of a young man who came to a Christian Science practitioner and asked for help because his bicycle had been stolen. As a messenger boy, he was nothing without his bicycle. The practitioner assured him that he would pray for him. A few days later the young man came back because the bicycle had not been found. The practitioner again assured him that he would help him, but the young man became desperate because he was not able to perform his job as a messenger boy without a bicycle. Then, after a few more days, he appeared at the doorstep of the practitioner’s office, beaming because he had found another, much better, job. He would not have been open to this job if he had still been a messenger boy on a bicycle.
The gentleman in church continued by telling of a time when he himself was quite young and very much in love with a lovely girl. The girl’s mother, however, was strictly against this friendship. The gentleman said that he prayed daily that God might change the mother’s mind. But this did not happen. However, he continued, everyone in the congregation who knew his wife could understand how happy he was that the other friendship did not end with a wedding, since he would not have met his present wife!
The gentleman explained that we don’t always receive what we are praying for, but that the fact that we are praying, being consciously aware of God’s goodness, makes us receptive to divine ideas. God knows what is good for us and for our spiritual growth, and more good than we can possibly imagine. Prayer is the way we stay in active contact with the divine, with the Principle of all being. Sometimes in life we may experience something of a pause—a period in between jobs or relationships, for example—but we ought not to worry.
I love what Mary Baker Eddy says in her book Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures: “Beholding the infinite tasks of truth, we pause,—wait on God. Then we push onward, until boundless thought walks enraptured, and conception unconfined is winged to reach the divine glory” (p. 323 ). Isn’t this a beautiful idea? It tells me that pauses, interruptions, and even involuntary stops don’t have to be negative. Rather, they can remind us to listen for direction from God. How comforting!
Jesus’ life was full of breaks and interruptions. Think, for example, of the time he was on the way to heal Jairus’ daughter and had to stop because a sick woman needed healing. And both she and Jairus’ daughter were healed (see Luke 8:41–56 ).
I really learned this lesson: that we can trust God everywhere, and in all situations.
As a young woman, I dreamed of working at The Mother Church in Boston. Although I wanted very much to get to know the different departments of the church through being there, I felt that Berlin, where I lived, was too far away for this to be possible. At that time it was still quite difficult to get a work permit and a visa for the US; I tried many times but to no avail. Then when speaking with my brother one day, we remembered an American friend who had visited our Christian Science Monitor Youth Forum in Berlin a few years before. We knew that this friend co-owned a firm in New York City that restored films that were worn from repeated screenings. I wrote to him, he offered me a job in his firm, I obtained a work permit and a visa, and off I went to New York.
However, after only six weeks my boss told me that he felt I should be looking for another employer. I was devastated. I had been convinced that this was the place shown to me by God. How could this happen? But then my roommate very gently said to me: “You know, Anni, couldn’t it be that it was an angel message that told your boss that this is not your right place?”
This was a new perspective. I stopped thinking that I had done something wrong (or that the whole situation was somehow my fault), and instead accepted that this was an opportunity to find the right job. This new perspective was an inner turn-around, and my initial feelings of disappointment gave way to hope. I could look at that first job as a precious “pause.”
I traveled to Boston to look for another job. But right in the middle of some interviews at The Mother Church, I received a phone call from a Christian Scientist in New York City. He was going to be the General Manager at the Christian Science Pavilion at the New York World’s Fair 1964–65, and he offered me the position of his secretary. This position had not existed before, he said; in fact, it had just been created, and would I consider coming?
I said yes right away. And those two years were among the best, the busiest, and the most interesting of my whole life, full of much work, new friends, and learning. During this time my love and appreciation of Christian Science grew and deepened, too, as a result of everything I was learning and the work I was involved in. I really learned this lesson: that we can trust God everywhere, and in all situations. If we listen attentively to His direction, our path will be made clear. So let’s not be fooled into thinking that an obstacle is insurmountable, just like we wouldn’t assume a train stop or a highway rest stop is the destination of our trip. The fact is that God always leads us all the way. And we are never really out of work, since there is always some activity waiting to be prayed about, to be thought through, to be pondered. To “pause,—wait on God” can be one of the most rewarding and fruitful activities we could be doing.
