Was I going to flunk?

It was my first year in law school, and one of my professors was completely intimidating. He was brilliant, but he didn’t have much patience for mistakes. I studied hard, but still spent every class cowering in the back and avoiding eye contact.

The night before the final exam, I began to panic. Concepts that I had studied many times suddenly seemed fuzzy, and I would read the same sentence over and over without retaining any of it. I began to imagine flunking the test and—why stop there?—flunking out of law school.

Obviously, none of this thinking was particularly inspired, so it came as a welcome surprise when a thought came to mind that I recognized from my study of Christian Science as being from God. It wasn’t your typical message. But it had a power and authority behind it that I’d come to identify with thoughts from God, rather than with something I’d come up with on my own.