Earlier this year, my husband and I were out running errands. We had just walked into a store when I started feeling off balance, and I was having trouble seeing, because there were spots affecting my vision. I asked my husband to walk me to the car, where we sat for a few minutes to pray. 

I prayed to see that health and freedom are my right as a child of God and that God was with me at that moment and always. There was nothing that could take away my joy or my ability to express God fully and freely. It was a quiet, prayerful moment in our car in the midst of a noisy, busy parking lot.  

We decided to drive home, and as we were leaving the parking lot, the sensor in our car that tells us we are too close to something started going off on my side of the car. I looked to the side, but there wasn’t anything there that would have set off the alarm. Suddenly, this thought came to me, which I recognized as being from God: “There is nothing there but God, filling all space, both outside and inside the car.” The feeling of oneness with God was palpable.

This clear message comforted me. All I could feel was the presence of God and this wonderful peace. I quietly basked in that feeling the rest of the way home. By the time we got home, the difficulties I’d been experiencing were almost entirely gone, and the rest faded away as I went on with my day.

For the next several days, I continued to feel that same peace I’d experienced in the car. It is described in the Bible as “the peace of God, which passeth all understanding” (Philippians 4:7). And, in an article I love from The Christian Science Journal, the author puts it this way: “In the radiance of God’s self-revealing activity, which is Science, we demonstrate the Christ as the presence of the power of God and the power of the presence of God, and man in God’s likeness shines forth” (L. Ivimy Gwalter, “The activity of the Christ,” December 1957). 

The peace that comes from feeling God’s presence is something we really want to remember. Nothing else gives us such contentment. It is separate from a material sense of things and is wholly spiritual. Feeling our oneness with God gives us an incomparable sense of God’s goodness and love for His children. It is something to be sought and treasured.

I am so grateful for the immediacy of prayer in Christian Science. I always think about the fact that our help is right with us. We don’t have to go to someone to tell us what is wrong and how to fix it. God is with us, and we can feel and hear Him immediately, particularly in times of need. As it says in the Bible, “God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble” (Psalms 46:1). I am so glad for the opportunity to better understand God’s goodness and for the healing that resulted from this understanding.

Cassia Schuck
Springfield, Virginia, US