The Bible records Jesus as saying, “Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free” (John 8:32). I’d like to share an example of how this proved true in my experience as a driver.

For the first five years that I had a driver’s license, I did not particularly enjoy making use of it. I couldn’t seem to drive for very long before my eyes and head would ache. Bright light, be it from the sun or the headlights of cars at night, also brought about the same painful effect. 

When I reached college, I participated in activities that involved travel, and at times I served as a driver. Still, I often needed someone to take my place behind the wheel after driving a short distance. It seemed that a sense of responsibility to keep my peers safe also weighed on me during these outings and contributed to the physical strain.

On one particular trip to a conference about a five-hour drive away, the demands placed on me seemed to be more than normal. As I prepared for the trip, I realized that the challenges I had been facing as a driver were something I could and should pray to heal. I needed to be alert at the conference, and I also had to be ready to drive my peers back to campus the following evening. On top of that, one of my math professors had given an important assignment, which he had asked the class to turn in by midnight the night of my return from the conference. That agenda didn’t leave room for problems of any kind! So I prayed to affirm that harmony was the only standard for the trip at hand.

Most of the drive took place on a large highway, and by the time it got dark, all that could be seen of the oncoming cars was a flurry of passing lights. With my thought calm, it humbled me to think that each of those headlights represented a unique journey, a unique path and purpose. Although there seemed to be an endless stream of cars, it occurred to me that everyone on the road was known to God as one of His sons or daughters, and I no longer saw the headlights as a potential source of discomfort, but as a hint of the vastness of God, infinite Mind, and His ideas.

As I continued to drive, I found great comfort from perceiving that infinite Mind not only knows its ideas, but that Mind also has a conscious purpose for each one. God’s control of all His work is a fixed fact, and nothing ever interferes with His authority or care. That meant that I could trust the well-being of everyone in my car and on the road to be forever maintained by God. I felt I was beginning to glimpse what Mary Baker Eddy wrote in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures: “Mind, supreme over all its formations and governing them all, is the central sun of its own systems of ideas, the life and light of all its own vast creation; and man is tributary to divine Mind” (p. 209).

This reassurance from God was the touch of the Christ, Truth, which perfectly met my need in this situation. The fears that anyone’s connection to God could be at risk dissipated, and the entire trip was safe and successful. I participated in the conference, drove the group home, and completed the math assignment—all without strain. In the years since that healing moment, the pain that driving once provoked has never again been part of my experience. I’m free!

Emily Sander 
Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts, US

This is the doctrine of Christian Science: that divine Love cannot be deprived of its manifestation, or object; that joy cannot be turned into sorrow, for sorrow is not the master of joy; that good can never produce evil; that matter can never produce mind nor life result in death. The perfect man—governed by God, his perfect Principle—is sinless and eternal.

— Mary Baker Eddy, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 304