Sometimes the world may seem dark, filled with confusion, fear, or sadness, not to mention hopelessness. It’s natural to search for light in those moments.
One of René Magritte’s “Empire of Light” paintings portrays a scene that, from a spiritual perspective, provides insight into hope and light.
In it, Magritte depicts a house that’s surrounded by darkness. A lone streetlamp illumines a small area, amid black trees and a blackened street. Looking out from within the house, it would appear to be night. However, the scene shows something else, too. The sky above is full of light and dotted with white, puffy clouds. The entire neighborhood is actually embraced in light – the inhabitants need only look up.
This reminds me of what the founder of Christian Science, Mary Baker Eddy, writes in “Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures”: “Darkness and doubt encompass thought, so long as it bases creation on materiality” (p. 551), and “Material sense does not unfold the facts of existence; but spiritual sense lifts human consciousness into eternal Truth” (p. 95).
These profound statements upend what the physical senses present to us. Matter is not a truth-teller. The welcome and relieving truth is that our real being is spiritual. As the expression of God, our creator, we’re not bound by limitations, as the physical senses would suggest. Instead, we’re whole and free.
It may not always seem so. But prayer can lead us to this lifted consciousness. Simple prayers can affirm the presence of God, whom the Bible calls Love, and of our relationship to Him as His beloved creation. Divine Love is full of spiritual light, which reveals that we are pure, good, healthy, redeemed. We are worthy. We are always held in God’s care. And God has given us dominion, as the Bible’s first chapter of Genesis says.
At times we may need to rally with prayers of perseverance until we feel this light of freedom. We can trust God to guide us out of darkness.
Recently, on an 11-hour flight departing on a bright London afternoon and flying west on a daylight path, I was disturbed to find that all the window shades were down. I always find it assuring to look out the window, and I had anticipated having natural light in the cabin. That’s not what I got, and I had no control over other people’s choices.
Because I felt uneasy and disoriented, I decided to pray. I reminded myself that God, Spirit, is present everywhere. And I remembered a Bible passage from Romans: “I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God” (8:38, 39). That brought a shift in my attitude. I reasoned that God’s ever-presence included not only me but my fellow passengers, the pilots, everyone on the ground and in the air, and the conditions around us, seen or unseen.
As Mrs. Eddy writes, “It is ignorance and false belief, based on a material sense of things, which hide spiritual beauty and goodness” (Science and Health, p. 304).
I continued in prayer with these insightful thoughts, and my discomfort and anxiety ceased. I realized my well-being was intact, whether the window shades were up or down! I could feel it.
Two hours into the flight, a lone passenger raised her shade. Though several rows from where I sat, I was able to glance at the light. And on strolls through the cabin I happily caught glimpses of clouds and the land and sea beneath us.
We can find the light of spiritual assurance wherever we are. Christian Science teaches that this light, or illumination of grace and goodness, is within us; within our consciousness. Turning to the supreme law of good, or God, we are made free, and our circumstances change for the better.
Beyond the deceptiveness of the narrow material view, spiritual light and hope are always present to be found and felt.
