Maybe you’ve experienced this: You’re sitting on the plane, buckled in, waiting for it finally to take off. Suddenly, those little screens come down from the ceiling, and then someone explains the safety measures in case of an emergency. Whenever I heard the emphatic instructions to put your oxygen mask on first before helping someone else, I cringed.
Then on a recent flight, just before they talked about the oxygen mask, the command from the Bible to love your neighbor as yourself (see Leviticus 19:18 and Matthew 19:19) came to my thought. I suddenly realized that up to then I had always seen these verses as a command to help my neighbor first. I had always thought that my neighbor came first, not me. Anything else would not be an expression of love! Or would it?
I remembered a health issue that I had dealt with some time ago. I had been very busy with my job and had not been paying attention to my own needs, or to how I was thinking. I felt weak and had bad headaches. During this turbulent time, everything concerning my neighbor had priority. My daily prayer was focused more on the daily activities that lay ahead of me than on the fact that I was rooted in God. Where were my own safety precautions? As I turned my attention to prayer for my own situation and was reassured that my connection to God was completely intact, I experienced a quick healing. I was able freely and happily to devote myself to my tasks.
Safety measures are supposed to prevent damage and to ensure that in case of an emergency, one can act constructively and calmly, and contribute to a solution. When I pick up Mary Baker Eddy’s book Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, I find in it a concentrated collection of healing instructions. There I also find a guideline for right priorities: “Love for God and man is the true incentive in both healing and teaching” (p. 454). This statement helped me to consider the only correct starting point for all my conclusions: God.
For us to be successful, our love for our neighbor must have a solid foundation.
So I start with acknowledging God’s presence and becoming aware of His love for me as His child. God’s love for me—that’s the kind of love in which I can value myself, care for myself, and be patient with myself. Building on this, I can serve my neighbor because I know we are one in this divine Love. As all of these thoughts came to me, I slowly began to understand the effect of putting the oxygen mask on myself first. Only from the calmness and certainty of knowing that I am already provided with and surrounded by everything I need to feel safe, protected, and at peace can I really contribute effectively to the safety of others and have the coordination and stability to witness fear dissolving into its natural nothingness. This consistent reasoning from the divine source, God, leads to safety in daily activities. But it also brings assurance and order into our consciousness when sickness or any other disturbance needs to be handled, when we have to make a decision, or when we are striving to gain a clear understanding of a situation.
For us to be successful, our love for our neighbor must have a solid foundation so it won’t constantly collide with the necessary steps of caring for ourselves. Such a foundation can be established, for example, by knowing ourselves to be embraced gently, yet in a very focused way, by God’s love. This consciousness is a constant protection, under which we can know how to do what’s necessary for ourselves as well as for others, and we can give the right priority to all our daily activities.
So that all our activities run harmoniously, we should acknowledge that they proceed from God. We don’t have to feel as though our personal demands are bombarding us, one after the other. God is our one and only divine source, and we express His being. We do everything, first and foremost, for God, and not just to check things off our to-do list. With this knowledge of God as the source of our being, we are securely rooted and therefore not prone to disturbances.
As I was sitting on the plane, as described above, with the safety video on the screen nearly complete, I realized, peacefully and joyfully, that security and fear do not go together, because in the infinite realm of divine Truth there is no room for insecurity. Mary Baker Eddy describes the following foundation for all of us: “On this basis the brotherhood of all peoples is established; namely, one God, one Mind, and ‘Love thy neighbor as thyself,’ the basis on which and by which the infinite God, good, the Father-Mother Love, is ours and we are His in divine Science” (The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany, p. 281).
I could see myself, the people next to me, my fellow men and women on the ground, and all my activities, as under the protection of this infinite God. And so I decided to put together for myself the following spiritual safety measures—something that I can look at every morning on my “inner screen” as I wake up:
Please buckle up well. Start this day with appreciation and a thank-you to God for being all-encompassing Love, and thus already governing you, and everything, and all, lovingly. Follow the radiant thought that as the loved, protected, and complete idea of God, you will see and experience His love in every individual you encounter today. See everyone’s good actions as expressions of the activity of God, always interacting harmoniously. And have a good, safe, and successful trip!
