Christine Love - The Christian Science Sentinel, Oct. 23, 2006
During my junior year of college, I had the opportunity to study abroad in Austria and Germany for ten weeks, taking classes and learning in a different environment. Right before that term began, I met a friend during spring break, and we set out to travel around Europe.
We started out in Italy, and then had to get up to Paris so that my friend could catch her plane to go home. We were supposed to take an overnight train from Florence to Paris, but we found out that the train was full and that our only other choice was to take a train that arrived in Paris at 11:30 at night. But because my friend needed to get to the airport, that’s what we had to do.
When we got to Paris, we tried to figure out what to do for the night. There wasn’t enough money for a hotel, so we decided to spend the night in the train station. We didn’t really have an alternative. At least with police officers walking around, there was some form of protection. Still, when we saw how many people there were, we weren’t comfortable sitting there. There were some rowdy people around us, yelling at police officers and that kind of thing—not a place where two 20-year-old women would want to spend the night.
When I’m traveling, I find that I use prayer in every situation, constantly reminding myself to bring my thought back to what is spiritually true about the world, instead of letting circumstances tell me things that could possibly go wrong. So I started praying in the train station. My friend and I started reading that week’s Christian Science Bible Lesson. I use these Bible Lessons every day—I see them as a way to start the day on a spiritual foundation.
The Lesson that week was titled “Man,” and right away I began praying to know the true concept of man. Mary Baker Eddy wrote in her book Science and Health that man is the image and likeness of God, the image of Love, “the compound idea of God, including all right ideas,” and “that which has not a single quality underived from Deity” (p. 475). These thoughts helped me not to see the people around us as drunk or mentally unstable, but instead, to know what was really true about everybody around us as God’s own image. At around 1:00 a.m., it was getting cold in the train station because it wasn’t very well sheltered. We thought we could at least take the subway to the airport, which would be a little bit more secluded and sheltered, so we went down to the subway. But when we got there, we discovered that the trains had stopped running until 5:00 a.m. Now we were stuck in a subway station, with some rowdy guys just up the stairs. I realized that even though this was a potentially threatening situation, I wasn’t afraid at all! I remembered a hymn from the Christian Science Hymnal that often comes to mind when I’m in tough situations. It begins:
God is my strong salvation;
What foe have I to fear?
In darkness and temptation,
My light, my help, is near:
Though hosts encamp around me,
Firm in the fight I stand;
What terror can confound me,
With God at my right hand?
(James Montgomery, No. 77)
I felt such a sense of comfort from those words, in knowing that my friend and I couldn’t be put into harm’s way, because God was right there with us. I held on to that idea, and around 2:30 in the morning a man came downstairs into the station. He was dressed head to toe in black, including a black hat, and was carrying a black briefcase. He was also wearing sunglasses and had gauze over one of his eyes. I suppose he was what you might call a strange character. The entire subway station was empty, but he chose to sit down right next to us.
I thought, OK. This man is one of God’s ideas. He doesn’t have “a single quality underived from Deity.” So I don’t have anything to be afraid of. The man didn’t speak much English and we didn’t speak much French, but we said hello to him, and he said, “I’m here for you.” During the hours we were together, he said those same words every once in a while. Occasionally someone would come down the stairs, but they would see the man sitting next to us and would leave. I recalled something Mary Baker Eddy wrote in Science and Health: “The very circumstance, which your suffering sense deems wrathful and afflictive, Love can make an angel entertained unawares” (p. 574). With that thought, I realized that the man sitting next to us had initially seemed to be intimidating or frightening—in a situation that my “suffering sense deem[ed] wrathful and afflictive.” But in reality, he was more of an angelic presence sitting next to us, someone who was protecting us and looking out for us.This man stayed with us until the first subway train came at 5:00 a.m. We just said, “Thank you,” and he told us that we had good hearts. It was so sweet. We got on the train, and my friend caught her flight, and I continued on my travels alone, with everything completely harmonious.
I love that idea that we’re never outside God’s protection. One of the Bible’s proverbs says: “Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths” (Prov. 3:5, 6). I’ve learned that in any discordant circumstance, we can either choose to believe the material picture in front of us, or we can choose to see God expressed in every situation. We can trust what God is telling us and where He’s directing us. We can calm down, put human fears aside, and realize that God is walking with us every step of the way.
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From one Christine to another, thank you for sharing what could have been one of your most frightening moments into one of your most blessed moments.