Testing times

By Barbara Weigt

The first words from the Bible that I committed to memory were "He careth for you." This phrase is part of a longer statement that reads, "[Cast] all your care upon [God], for he careth for you" (I Pet, 5:7). However, for me as a four-year-old, the short version was as much as I could manage.

Soon, Scripture memorization began to play an important role in my life. The Sunday School in which I received my early spiritual training encouraged us to learn new Bible quotations every week. I happily participated in the challenge to recite what I'd learned, though my diligence wasn't always motivated solely by a love for what I was reading in the Bible. The Sunday School offered incentives such as earning points toward summer camp scholarships—and I loved summer camp!

As I grew, so did the length of the passages I memorized, and so did my appreciation for the richness of their messages. Somewhere along the way, the words became truth for me—something I could hang on to, a foundation on which to build my life. And the rewards for having programmed those gems into my personal memory bank proved immeasurable.

During my high-school years, I was bombarded by all the temptations typical of that stage of life. What rescued me, were some words I'd memorized from the Apostle Paul's letter to the Christians at Corinth, a thriving seaport rife with corruption: "There hath no temptation taken you but such as is common to man: but God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation also make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear it" (I Cor. 10:13).

I thought of Jesus successfully facing down Satan's temptations in the wilderness with a firm "Get thee behind me, Satan" (Luke 4:8) and realized suddenly that I wasn't having an experience that no one had ever had before, and that there was a way out. The angels mentioned by Luke had been given charge over me, too.

What I instinctively knew—but didn't fully appreciate until I began studying Christian Science decades later—was that God doesn't lead us into temptation. As Mary Baker Eddy wrote in her spiritual interpretation of the Lord's Prayer, God delivers us from "sin, disease, and death" (see Science and Health, p. 17).

Several years later, I again cried out for deliverance when my father died suddenly at the age of 49, on another continent. At the time, I was living in the aftermath of the brutal Mau Mau rebellion in Kenya, battling fear, and already feeling desperately alone. The grief and despair I felt were crushing.

This time I was helped by a broader application of St. Paul's rallying cry to the Corinthians. In my Bible studies, I found that the word translated as temptation is used in some versions of the Bible to mean test or trial. It occurred to me that I was being tempted to believe that the test I was facing was more than I could bear. But instead, as a result of prayerful meditation on Paul's words, a deep peace came over me. The tears dried, and my fear lifted. I knew that my ded was in a safe place—and so was I.

Testing comes to all of us at various times in our lives, and is not, as I now see it, sent by a stern God to see if we can stick it out. It's in these testing times that we are able to prove the constancy of God's care. There's certainly no doubt in my mind that we can throw our cares and concerns on Him ... because He cares for us.

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For greater peace in Africa

May 3, 2004

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