Noiseless Nights


A few years ago, my wife and I were staying at a bed and breakfast that
was located right in the heart of where many college students lived.
Around midnight, loud partying in the street below our room woke us. The
last time we'd stayed there, students' rowdy behavior had kept us up all
night. It looked as if we were in for another restless night.

But then my wife and I realized that we were believing something that
wasn't true. God's children couldn't be drunk and disorderly, because
they're spiritual and pure. That's what we've learned from the Bible.

But how could we square what was happening in the street below with the
many inspired passages throughout the Bible that indicate the
uprightness, purity, and perfection of man (of all God's children, male
and female)?

I thought about the fact that God is perfect, and that everything He
makes is perfect, including His offspring, whom He has created has
created in His image and likeness (see Gen. 1:26). God never makes
mistakes. He cannot create one individual perfect and another inclined
to be drunk and disorderly. That would be contrary to His law.

As we better understand God, we also gain a better understanding of the
child of God. This is what my wife and I tried to do that night.
Thinking about God as divine Spirit helped.

Here's a wonderful way of describing God as Spirit from Mary Baker
Eddy's book Science and Health: "He fills all space and it is impossible
to conceive of such omnipresence and individuality except infinite
Spirit or Mind. Hence all is Spirit and spiritual." (p.331). What we
were hearing outside of our window was not actually a part of God's
purely spiritual creation. And since God did not create it, we refused
to be its victims, or to believe that others could be.

Understanding more clearly that each one of those students was the man or
woman whom God had created calmed us. Then, shortly, we noticed that the
noise had ceased, and we slept peacefully the rest of the night. We were
glad for the rest, but the best reward was seeing more clearly that no
form of evil could touch God's creation.