Article February 10, 2020 Issue

Needed: Witnesses to God’s unifying harmony and love

Laura Clayton

A version of this article appeared in The Christian Science Monitor’s Christian Science Perspective column October 30, 2019.

It was 8 a.m. in a local doughnut shop. I sat at a table, waiting for my car to be repaired at the garage next door. After a while, looking up from my reading, I noticed something lovely. The atmosphere in this popular breakfast spot brimmed with lightness. A cashier traded jokes with some construction workers. A retiree sweetly offered his table to a mom with two toddlers. Police officers joked with a little boy. All the while, an employee kept bursting into full-throated song between orders—much to the laughter of his coworkers. Everyone was expressing such joy and kindness; it felt as if they were family.

As I watched and listened, I felt buoyed up, too. I thought, “If only the whole world could wake up each day like this!” The news reports I had been reading that morning certainly didn’t present anything like this kind of picture. I asked myself, Was this happy morning in a doughnut shop just an insignificant blip in the scheme of things? Or did it offer a glimpse of something deeply meaningful and genuine?

I intuitively felt that the latter was the case. Such currents of joy and lightness don’t always make headlines, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t present and ongoing.

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