In a product-driven and results-driven society, it’s tempting to focus only on the destination—as they say—instead of the journey. Sometimes even in my spiritual practice, I’ve discovered how easy it is to slip into focusing on the end result rather than how I’m going along. I learned a big lesson on the difference between the two through Christian Science not long ago. 

I had been hired by a local company to teach a six-part business writing workshop to its employees. The first class session was OK, but the atmosphere was more unsettled than other classes I’d taught in the past in other venues. I excused it by calling it an adjustment period, but by the end of the second class session, I was near tears. There didn’t seem to be any way of controlling the class. The adult students were using foul language, telling crude jokes, interrupting me, and were generally disrespectful. I was shaken. When the president of the company found out about it, I secretly hoped she’d dismiss me, but she didn’t. I would have to stick with the class and, I decided, work it out through prayer since I saw no other way.  

I needed to stem the panic and dread of going back into the classroom.

I knew I needed to love the students, because love was a Christian demand on me—to see each of God’s children as God sees them (see John 13:35, for example). Both the master Christian, Christ Jesus, and Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer of the prophesied Comforter, Christian Science, lived this love consistently. And they showed their followers how to do it through expressing God-given mercy and discernment—exercising their capacity to identify and accept what is true, and identify and reject what is false. 

What the Word of God reveals to receptive consciousness about His child, as His image and likeness, is true; while a material view, presented to a mortal sense of ego, is false. “Jesus beheld in Science the perfect man, who appeared to him where sinning mortal man appears to mortals. In this perfect man the Saviour saw God’s own likeness, and this correct view of man healed the sick” (Mary Baker Eddy, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, pp. 476–477).

When we dismiss the false picture claiming to be a part of the true nature of ourselves or others, and also dismiss the mortal mindedness claiming to be our thinking, we see ourselves and others as innocent and forgive them. These are concepts I’d come to understand through my study of Christian Science. 

To start with, I needed to stem the panic and dread of going back into the classroom with all these individuals. I calmed my thought by deeply desiring, “Shepherd, show me how to go”—words in a poem by Mary Baker Eddy set to music in the Christian Science Hymnal (Poems, p. 14). 

I then thought, “I just need to love them all.” This concept was familiar, but it felt abstract in that moment because these words quickly followed: “Yes, but you weren’t hired to love them.”

This very simple idea came next: I was hired to teach them business writing, and I was loving them by fulfilling my commitment to do that. “Shepherd, show me how to go” were the words that I had been cherishing. How to go, not where to go or what. How to love them was by teaching them; how to teach them was by loving. Divine Love would show me how to do both, I affirmed. 

This shepherding Love rules out chaos or ignorance or lack.  

I thought of Psalm 23, where this shepherding Love rules out chaos or ignorance or lack. It begins, “The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want” (verse 1); and in the Christian Science textbook, Science and Health, Mrs. Eddy sheds light on the psalm by substituting “Divine Love,” for the word Lord: “[DIVINE LOVE] is my shepherd; I shall not want” (p. 578). I began to see how her poem that I’d been praying with, “ ‘Feed My Sheep,’ ” the one that begins, “Shepherd, show me …,” relates to that psalm beautifully. 

I acknowledged myself and the students as “sheep” (innocent and loved) being shepherded by divine Love, and I went to the next class in humility, with a willingness to trust our Shepherd. I felt very peaceful, like the “sheep,” able to settle in the green pastures and stroll next to the “still waters,” seeing myself and others as God’s reflection.

For the next session, I had been ready either to give an inspiring speech or just plow through the lesson plan undeterred, but neither happened. Instead, the students all opened up to me and to each other, confessing their insecurities about their writing skills. 

Even though almost the whole session was taken up with this unexpected conversation, and we were not sticking to the tight curriculum I’d designed, I let divine Love show me how to go: Listen lovingly, patiently, compassionately. They were sincere in outpouring their need to feel validated and worthy. 

Near the end of the discussion, I shared some thoughts, and we were able to agree that the class was an opportunity they could relish and be grateful for. It was reminiscent of being in the presence of “enemies,” with a feast provided by Love for all of us (see Psalms 23:5). 

By the next class session, we had caught up with my planned curriculum. We finished the rest of the workshop over the coming weeks with a sense of camaraderie, good humor, and respect. And after a test I gave at the end, it was evident the students had learned a lot, and the president was pleased with the results.

That experience was life-changing for me. It taught me to shift my focus from what I thought I should be accomplishing to how I could go about it. When there is a need for healing, sometimes we think of what the end result should look or feel like (to stop hurting, to be able to pay the bills, to have a broken heart mended, to be respected in class). This strong urge to see a changed result—a what—explains the attraction to materia medica or any quick-fix material remedy. 

Of course it is right and natural to see an improved and healed experience. But practicing Christian Science, as indicated in Psalm 23, includes a healing result that is so much more expansive, deep, and permanent than merely a changed “what.” Divine Love’s shepherding “how to go” empowers us to shift how we think; and that changes the what we arrive at. 

Mary Baker Eddy wrote, “When we learn in Science how to be perfect even as our Father in heaven is perfect, thought is turned into new and healthy channels,—towards the contemplation of things immortal and away from materiality to the Principle of the universe, including harmonious man” (Science and Health, p. 276). 

Even though we may be passing through something as dramatic as “the valley of the shadow of death,” or any overwhelming circumstance that could be considered a “rugged way,” we can proceed fearlessly. We can follow God’s direction and rejoice in His comforting presence. 

The Shepherd’s rod and staff restrain willfulness, rule out of us “callous” motives, and nullify self-righteousness. They rouse us to awake to and accept Love’s heavenly promise, our spiritual perfection, the present fact—because we are the offspring of God, our parenting Shepherd. And, in fact, trusting our Shepherd, divine Love, and following His leading into His fold is our salvation. 

In the case of my classroom experience, simply having the students be quiet and behave—a seemingly desirable end result—would not have been a complete healing, if that had been the only outcome. But the shepherding of Love showed me the manner in which to go—“How to gather, how to sow”—lovingly, humbly, compassionately. “One’s aim, a point beyond faith, should be to find the footsteps of Truth, the way to health and holiness” (Science and Health, p. 241). The result was so much more than a shipshape classroom—though the outcome did include an improved condition, or, in a way, being washed clean. And I saw that I do dwell in the very consciousness of Love.

In my classroom experience and many other times, understanding God as Shepherd, divine Love, has helped me to listen for how to go, and to follow with joy and dominion. How do we go? Rejoicingly, fearlessly, lovingly, and gratefully—with a willing heart, acknowledging the comforting, shepherding love of the Christ.