A horrible tragedy struck Bangladesh recently. A garment factory, badly in need of implementing a whole range of safety measures, collapsed. More than a thousand individuals, mostly workers, were lost in the calamity. A factory owner, unwilling to shoulder the expense of taking safety-enhancing steps, may face murder charges.

In the middle of that devastation, and an amazing 17 days after the collapse, a factory worker was discovered alive in the rubble. At this writing she appears to be doing well and is expected to make a full recovery.

Of course, one drop of hope does not outmatch the storm of grief now raining down on those who lost loved ones. Coping with life’s most devastating moments almost never means applying a one-size-fits-all remedy. This survivor’s story is worth considering, though. Could it remind one that wreckage and ruin don’t have the last word? Does a single note of harmony hint at an entire symphony of healing?

It is the saving Christ that heals. The Christ overrides the inharmony that looks so intimidating. Christ is the message of restoration and renewal. Christ comes from the limitless God, who is Life, and Love, and Spirit. It goes straight to the big lie that we are all mortal and material.

This might be considered one of the miracles of the universe: God knows nothing unlike Himself, yet it is His Christ that goes right to the mortal dream with a message of hope and of healing. The Christ-Spirit tenderly reaches each one of us, and embraces each individual consciousness. Christ speaks in a language that everyone can understand. It is the language of Love. 

Hold to these facts in prayer, and they will help point you along paths of hope rather than of helplessness, of gratitude rather than of grief. If it weren’t for the Christ, one might, in those most overwhelming of moments, wander directionless, without a path or a purpose. But when we turn to the Christ and feel its divine urging, our hearts “burn within us” (Luke 24:32). and this healing presence becomes even more real.

Shortly after Jesus’ crucifixion—but before the resurrection was generally known to the disciples—came an encounter sometimes referred to as “the walk to Emmaus.” (Emmaus was a village about seven miles outside Jerusalem.) Two disciples journeyed together, and because they had much to sort out, they reviewed the previous few days. Jesus joined them. Initially, they failed to recognize who he was. They wondered aloud how he could be so uninformed of the “things” that had just happened, He asked, “What things?” (Luke 24:19).

Some Bible students feel that Christ Jesus was so engaged by the light flooding his thought that he simply did not know what things the disciples were talking about. He had no consciousness of discord. For these students the Master was, mentally speaking, in a different place from his disciples. Other Bible students see the Master’s question of “What things?” as a recognition on his part that this was a “teachable moment,” and he was present to help them learn. Instead of being engulfed by defeat, could the two disciples awake to the promise of the resurrection? They confessed to one another that while journeying with the Master, their hearts had burned within them.

The Christian Science textbook, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, by Mary Baker Eddy, speaks to all honest seekers. It says: “In the walk to Emmaus, Jesus was known to his friends by the words, which made their hearts burn within them, and by the breaking of bread. The divine Spirit, which identified Jesus thus centuries ago, has spoken through the inspired Word and will speak through it in every age and clime. It is revealed to the receptive heart, and is again seen casting out evil and healing the sick” (p. 46).

In some way, perhaps we each have a walk to Emmaus before us—a journey that reaches from apparent defeat to certain triumph. Christ is that indestructible. Christ is that present. Even beneath mountains of rubble and of wreckage, the Christ is at hand. For now, it makes wonderful sense to pour out one’s gratitude for victories such as the woman’s survival after being trapped for 17 days. And further, to so grow in our awareness of the presence of the Christ, that in times to come more people needing rescue will also be saved. Fewer will be lost. 

Of course, there is no escaping the fact that what happened in Bangladesh was not just a tragedy. It was also a crime. There is no justification for the criminal negligence of the factory owner. Yet when events such as this take place, you can sink into cynicism and bitterness—or you can fight back spiritually. Christ roots out criminality and evil of every sort. You can mentally and spiritually embrace the Christ-message and forward its correcting action.

A matter-based take on the world around you is not scientific. Believe that it is and you build on sand. Nothing sturdy will come of that. Nothing lasting will follow, because nothing stemming from a material basis is ever spiritually sound. The above passage from Science and Health includes the words, “the divine Spirit … is again … casting out evil.” The time will come when the promise of your prayer burns brighter, when evil and criminality find less darkness in which to hide, and when more people are pulled from the rubble to safety—or, better yet, when fewer people need rescuing at all. Why? Because the healing, saving, redeeming Christ is there.