It was two minutes before the end of lunch, on a Friday. Students shuffled out of the cafeteria and ambled toward their fifth-period classes.

Suddenly, shots exploded outside. Then, gunfire ripped through the first-floor hallway. Everyone started running. The PA system blared out orders. Teachers herded students into classrooms and bolted the doors.

No one knew the specifics, but everyone knew what had happened. It was another shooting. Probably gang-related. And once again, the quietude of this neighborhood high school—one of the "safest" schools in Miami—had been blasted wide-open.

An eleventh-grade teacher (let's call her Mrs. Z) tried to present a calm exterior. She asked her students to sit down as usual and started them out on an informal vocabulary game. Meanwhile, police cars, ambulances, helicopters, and security officers with cell phones closed in on the school.

Finally, some students came running into Mrs. Z's classroom with the details: two students had been shot multiple times. They were seriously wounded.

A girl in the class looked up at Mrs. Z and said, "We should pray! We should pray for those kids who were shot!"

"That's good idea," Mrs. Z said. "We can't do it as a class, though. It's against the law in Florida. But you can sure pray on your own. Matter of fact, I encourage you to pray."

So, as the class went on playing the vocabulary game—and as sirens and loudspeakers and helicopters filled the air with bedlam—students prayed, each one, individually. They prayed silently, in their hearts. And Mrs. Z prayed, too.

Of course, Mrs. Z doesn't know exactly what thoughts her students had as they prayed. But she knew they were praying, because they stopped acting scared. A feeling of calm settled down on the classroom.

Mrs. Z knows how she prayed, though. It wasn't anything complicated. Mainly, she just remembered that God was there. Because He's everywhere. He was with her. He was with her class and with everybody else at the school. He was with the students who'd been shot. And always, always, God defends the innocent.

Just knowing these things made Mrs. Z feel more calm on the inside—not just acting calm on the outside. It made her feel God had already answered her prayers, and those of her students. And it actually made her feel safe, as if she and all the students at the school—even those who'd been shot—were in a secret, protected place where they couldn't be hurt.

Now, maybe you're wondering if there really is some secret place you can escape to when you're in danger. Or was Mrs. Z just imagining this feeling? Well, according to the Bible, there is such a place. "He that dwelleth in the secret place of the most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty," says the book of Psalms (91:1).

So where is this place? Actually, it's right where you are. It's in your thoughts. It's a place you can go to instantly by thinking of God—and His insuperable love and power and absolute goodness.

Maybe that sounds a little abstract. Maybe you're not sure you even believe in God. Or maybe you sometimes ask yourself why He allows things like shootings and gang wars to go on in the first place.

But is it really fair to blame God for things like this—things He never, ever would cause? Columnist Mike Barnicle of The Boston Globe thinks the answer to this question is a definite "NO." "God is not some sick, homicidal maniac," he wrote after a recent plane crash. "God does not play games with our lives. God's 'plan' doesn't involve explosives, bullets and bloodshed." ^{Mike Barnicle, "What does He make of it all?" The Boston Globe, July 25, 1996 .}

We believe Barnicle is right. God is too perfectly good to cause evil. He doesn't cause teenagers to shoot teenagers. He doesn't cause the hopelessness and poverty and hatred that, experts say, drive teenagers to gangs and violence. He doesn't cause the juvenile violence that's "skyrocketing" in the United States. ^{Jonathan Freedland, "Crime statistics show violence down in traditional American big-city areas," The Ottawa Citizen, December 6, 1994 .} And He doesn't cause what experts call the "new undergraduate class of ruthlessly violent teen-agers who strike with abandon, indiscriminately and without remorse." ^{The Trends Journal, Fall 1995 .}

Some people say these evils are products of our society. And that they'll continue indefinitely—because human nature itself is so hopelessly flawed.

But that reasoning just doesn't square with what God is and with what our nature really is. It doesn't square with God's absolute goodness and justice and love for every single one of us. What God is, makes us what we are. After all, we're His children. So we're not inherently evil. We're the effect of His perfectness. And so there's nothing more natural than for us to be good and just and loving—like God.

So, what does all this mean when there's a shooting in your city or your neighborhood? Or at your school? It means you have choices to make. You can choose not to do things that would only make the situation worse. For instance, you can choose not to panic. You can choose not to lose faith in God or humanity. You can choose not to get angry or vindictive.

And beyond that, you can choose to pray. You can opt to let good thoughts—thoughts about God's love and unfailing care for each one of His children—take over in your heart. You can take a stand for the basic redeemability of humanity. You can feel compassion toward people who mistakenly believe that violence is a legitimate way to express feelings or to prove how "tough" they are.

And you can do something more. You can find a faith in God's justice and mercy that assures you that good has to win out because God is omnipotent. And because—when you come right down to the truth of the matter—nothing besides God has any power at all.

Every thought like this helps. It helps save and heal the victims of crime. If helps you know what to do in a crisis. It protects you. And it takes a modest step toward redeeming teenage violence.

Astounding results can follow from your good, God-inspired thoughts—your constructive individual prayer. Mary Baker Eddy explained why. "Good thoughts are an impervious armor; clad therewith you are completely shielded from the attacks of error of every sort," she wrote. "And not only yourselves are safe, but all whom your thoughts rest upon are thereby benefited" (The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany, p. 210).

That's what happened with the one-by-one prayers of Mrs. Z and her class. The students who had been shot improved rapidly. And everyone else felt able to return to school the following Monday.

True, there was talk of various countermeasures to stop future shootings—security guards, metal detectors, and such. But the previous Friday, some people at that school had learned about a more potent kind of countermeasure. They'd learned about how to enter, each one, into a "secret place" of prayer. A place that's hidden from danger. But even more than that, a place where God's love eliminates even the possibility of danger.

Mary Metzner Trammell