Loving our neighbor even when we’ve been wronged

I was writing down a flood of inspiring thoughts. I had been taking a course on Christian Science and its method of healing. Our Christian Science teacher had given the class an assignment to pray for our “enemies”—to love them with a pure, brotherly love as Jesus taught. As I thought about this, I was thankful that I didn’t have any enemies. Then, I remembered the truck driver from a car accident I’d been involved in. Here was someone I could love! I’d been injured in this accident and had found freedom and healing through prayer in Christian Science (see “Highway incident sparks deep study and healing,” The Christian Science Journal, March 2022). 

In class, we had just learned how to give Christian Science treatment. This included statements of truth about God’s goodness, affirmations of our relation to God as His purely spiritual and good child, and refutations of evil. So, I wrote out a treatment for myself on loving my neighbor. I prayed to see the truck driver as God’s law-abiding child, who was made in His image and likeness and could express only divine Love in innocence, purity, and alertness. (In the incident, my car had been at a standstill in traffic and was hit by the truck, whose driver hadn’t seen that traffic wasn’t moving.) I began to feel a genuine love for the driver. 

That’s when the phone rang. It was my lawyer, whom I hadn’t heard from in over two months. He was calling to ask what my next steps would be regarding the accident. He recommended that we proceed with suing the driver, and he was calling to get my approval.