One rule I’ve learned over the years for successful spiritual healing is that it’s not sufficient to pray for one’s own health. One needs to pray for the health of their neighbor too to keep oneself healthy.
We do not live in a bubble. We live as members of God’s expansive family, and what we accept as true for one family member, we accept as true for all family members, including ourselves.
With rampant Covid fears circulating in public consciousness, it’s important to our own health to see the truth about our neighbor too. It’s not okay to go about one’s business and ignore what is happening around the neighborhood. As a neighborhood fire can jump from house to house, fear would seem to jump from house to house too. But it can be stopped with conscientious prayer.
Be proactive with your prayers for the safety and health of your neighbors. They are all children of God and have Christ to protect them from contagion and suffering.
The more we collectively know the truth about everyone’s relationship to God and see each family member in the love and care of God, the more that truth will be felt throughout our neighborhood and have a beneficial effect. These prayers not only bless our neighbor, but they also bless us by keeping our thought in a good healthy spiritual place. Everyone is benefited.
“I urge you, first of all, to pray for all people. Ask God to help them; intercede on their behalf, and give thanks for them” (I Timothy 2:1, NLT).
Hadn’t thought of this. Thank u.
Thank you so much Evan for reminding us about our neighbours.
I know that my neighbours have challenges and when I was thinking about them a few days ago, I decided to focus on their wonderful spiritual qualities instead of their challenges. I know they have many good qualities as we have lived next door to them for over 40 years! They are happy, helpful, trustworthy, always uplifting, stoic, fun, generous and so much more.
During lockdown I shared some of our bumper harvest of gooseberries with them, later that day they shared gooseberry turnovers, still warm from the oven, with us! “Love is reflected in love!”.
Have a great day. X
Thank you Dilys, YUM, who doesn’t love fresh baked gooseberry turnovers, served still warm?
Great post and very timely as usual, thank you Evan. Our neighbor is not less than the whole world but not more difficult to pray for it, and indeed such a blessing. Thank you for this blessing blog.
Reluctant to pray for the world? Roll that ‘stone’ away.
https://sentinel.christianscience.com/shared/view/2bblw2v7w6a?s=e
It’s always so comforting to know how God’s love surrounds each one of His precious ideas. Just a few hours ago one of my neighbors came to my door to advise me that a fire was burning in the woods behind our homes. The fire trucks came and we were unable to leave as the trucks blocked our way out. So of course I went straight to Science and Health and refreshed my thought of Mrs. Eddy’s definition of Fear, which I recognized as error and without any power over the safety of myself or my precious neighbors. I then read her definition of Fire where it stated “affiliation purifying and uplifting man”. I immediately knew that’s all that was happening at that time. It was a very uplifting experience actually as I went back outside and checked to make certain no one needed anything at that time and that everyone was accounted for. I then knew I could best serve by devoting myself to further study of our Lesson Sermon, “God the Only Cause and Creator”. As I write this the fire is out, all my neighbors are snuggled in their homes and it is clear God is the only Cause and Creator. Evan, I truly thank you for your reminder that prayers for the health of not only ourselves and our loved ones but also our neighbors, our communities and our world. “Love is reflected in love”.
Opps! I meant to add the word “proves” between the last two sentences.
Once I was called out of Debbie Boon Christian concert to be told by a policeman that my farm was on fire. When I arrived I was told they couldn’t get equipment in to fight the fire because the winds were too night. Then the wind stopped for ten minutes and they were able to extinguish the flames.
Late I was told Debbie stopped the concert for ten minutes saying “We can’t go on. I don’t know that man’s needs but we are going to pray for him..”
O the blessing of mutual love and concern.
And, the power of prayer..
Beautiful! Thank you!
Thank you for telling us that story John, I literally had chills up my spine reading it. Fantastic, moving. Debbie Boone — blessings to her to you and to all of the children of God throughout the world.
Yes from this i remeber a good friend of mee said when wathing tv, this People( wee saw at the screen)are doing as God telling them to do, but they dont now it yet 🙂
Very often people don’t realize what’s blessing them. When prayers are beingt answered, we see it and are grateful for it, neighbors don’t realize it and just go on living the better life.
That has to be enough for now. What blesses one blesses all. Thank you for sharing that experience.
You have just blessed the Neighborhood of Spirit View!
Yes! What a lovely and confirming evidence that our prayers are very worth the effort!
Dear Evan,
Thank you so much for your gracious and important message. I deeply appreciate it.
It reminds me that God’s love is in operation, illuming the universe, and causing us to see and love ourselves and all others as God’s reflection. I think of this:
“Divine Science, the Word of God, saith to the darkness upon the face of error, “God is All-in-all,” and the light of ever-present Love illumines the universe. Hence the eternal wonder, — that infinite space is peopled with God’s ideas, reflecting Him in countless spiritual forms. …God, Spirit, dwelling in infinite light and harmony from which emanates the true idea, is never reflected by aught but the good.”
(Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, Mary Baker Eddy, p. 503:12, 28)
And I think—-As we understand God’s creation in this light, the light described in the passage above, we are filled with love. We love the all-ness of God, Spirit, and love Her entire creation. Christ Jesus’ example inspires us:
“Jesus beheld in Science the perfect man, who appeared to him where sinning mortal man appears to mortals. In this perfect man the Saviour saw God’s own likeness, and this correct view of man healed the sick.
(Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, Mary Baker Eddy, pp. 476:32–4)
Thank you so much, Evan, for today’s message and for all your loving messages. I am so grateful.
Dear Cherie, I thank you very much for the passages and verses you state so wonderfully clear, and they are so relevant to Evan’s wonderful and needed reminder to pray for our neighbors and love them.
Tank you dear Evan for this important advice
to pray for our neighbor, that means, what we were advised during our CS classes, to pray for the world, meaning for our divine worldfamily. what Cherie also said with the passages.
However, I understand likewise, that Evan really means to pray for the health and well being of our direct neighbors where we live. And I also think that is important, as well! Thanks a lot Evan!
And how lively are all the comments here today again – thanks all so much!!♡
“Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.”
At the point of having anyone in thought,
they become our neighbor. Politicians,
world leaders, church members, community
leaders, anyone that comes to thought.
And we might not want to pray for some of them. Then we become the neighbor that needs prayer.
SpiritView neighbors graciously visit every
day. Many thanks! ❤️
This is a necessary, timely reminder; it corresponds with yesterday’s post about being open and inclusive! Thank you!!
Thank you so much for this reminder, dear Evan, and for ALL of your wonderful & uplifting daily blogs. I treasure them each day; but today I really needed thos reminder. And it’s not always enough just to pray for our neighbors. We need to take the action that comes to us as a result of those prayers. Today, it had come to me up get some lunch for a few of my corner street folks I see on a daily basis. “Feed the hungry, heal the heart” Mrs. Eddy says in hymn 304. This is how you’ve jump started my prayers & actions today, my friend.
Hey Richard,
Lovely to hear of your prayer in action–a good reminder to all of us to express the “Christian” part of CS. We are so blessed to be able to bless others. I was able to help provide TG dinner with a family Ive been close to for 30 yrs living in the Mississippi Delta. They love the ideas in CS while they attend their local baptist church.
Thank you also to Maggie and Jan and ALL for your helpful comments!
What a perfect reminder for me this morning. Our Church and Reading Room and temporarily closed due to Covid. Yesterday I needed to stop by the Reading Room to drop something off so I checked messages on the machine while there. A call had come in from a woman living in a retirement community who was wondering about services. I called her back and we had a lovely chat. I woke up this morning thinking about her and wondering what I could do for her and decided probably not much with all the restrictions currently in place. After reading SpiritView I realized I can and will pray for her. Thank you Evan, for the reminder.
Living close enough to a highway I can hear occasionally, I sometimes in the morning think about all the people driving down that highway and pray that they know they’re loved and protected and are going to have a wonderful day. No worries about politics or pandemics or anything else just looking forward to a healthy day and a happy upcoming Christmas
Thank you for the reminder, Evan, and you as well have that perfect, Soul filled day.
Thank you for this gentle reminder, dear Evan.
How often do I say..’God Loves Me…I am His perfect expression..” And this is true of every body even if they are unaware of it at this moment. We are not personalities but are expressions of the Divine Mind. Therefore it makes perfect sense to hold just not ourselves but everyone in our thought as the loved of Love. Demonstration is the product of this inclusiveness in our prayers, as shown by some of our commenters today. Thank you Evan for this today❣️
I get regular messages from Neighbourhood Watch that tells us of any crimes being
committed round and about where I live and the scams that are going on. I use all of the
information as prayers to see the spiritual facts of every one. They also encourage us to watch out for our neighbours, particularly the elderly and those who live on their own. My village is very
active in helping neighbours, and I pray to see that all this activity is the Law of God
– i.e. Love At Work. As we know from our study of Science & Health, “Divine Love always has met and always will meet every human need” (Mary Baker Eddy) We are reflections of that Love, and it is natural for us respond to that need when it comes before us, and it is a joy. There is also the golden rule – “Do unto others as you would have them to unto you”. We may need this help ourselves some time, and we can know it will be met by that Divine Law.
time
We hear the expression “We’re all in the same boat.” Let’s see that boat as the ark (Science and Health, page 581).
Oh Thank you so very much Evan, for this morning’s alertness message and for all the wonderful responses, the article suggestion, inspirations and testimonials.
Many years ago as a young mother I was trapped 10 days in a hospital bed following an emergency with very scary diagnoses swirling around. I had been raised in Christian Science, so of course we had a practitioner working with us, but the fear wouldn’t let go. So while stuck in that bed I read the book of Job from the King James Version of The Bible.
The healing came when I got to the end: Job 42: 10
“And the Lord turned the captivity of Job, when he prayed for his friends:”. Fundamental Truth !
That healing has been a rock for me ever since.
God Bless us One and All
So grateful for all the loving and insightful comments from all! As I watched the full moon setting behind snow-capped peaks in the west this morning, I thought of “Beloved, now are we the sons (children) of God.” Each one is a full reflection of the Mind that is Love and Life, and divine good.
Yes! This is wonderful,Evan! Thank you ! Thank you! ❤️
Thanks Evan for clarifying this essential directive, thanks Martine for sharing that rousing article, & thanks All for such inspiring & helpful posts !
WOW
LOVE and THANK YOU
THANK YOU
LOVE
ALL
Loved the story about Debbie Boon! Reminds me of the Miracles that took place in Dunkirk, 1940. Amazing!!! So moving that I gave a speech at Toastmasters on it …what power of prayer can and does do!!!!
(I tried attaching a word document without success….this is rather long for this blog but I believe worth the read—at least the last couple of paragraphs)
The Four Miracles of Dunkirk
During the darkest hours of World War II, King George VI called for a national day of prayer and churches across Great Britain were filled with people. See how those prayers were answered.
by Evan MillerFrom – Posted on Nov 14, 2017
You may have seen the hit movie Dunkirk, director Christopher Nolan’s powerful tribute to the real-life World War II drama that unfolded over 10 days in 1940, on the shores of France. But there’s more to the story than what was shown on the screen. To wit, four miracles that changed the course of the war.
For Winston Churchill, the new British prime minister, it all began with an early phone call on May 15 that roused him from sleep.
“We have been defeated,” said the French premier, Paul Reynaud. “We are beaten.”
Churchill was well aware of the Nazi advance. Days earlier, Adolf Hitler’s army had taken Holland, Belgium and Luxembourg, with Denmark and Norway already in his grip. England had sent more than 200,000 troops to France and Belgium. All for nothing, it now seemed.
“Surely it can’t have happened so soon?” the stunned Churchill said.
“The front is broken,” Reynaud said. “The Nazis are pouring through in great numbers.”
The Allies had severely miscalcu¬lated the path the Nazis would take. The Germans had swept south, through the supposedly impenetrable Ardennes Forest, a region the Allies had barely bothered to defend. Now British and French troops found themselves surrounded, in disarray. Their only possible escape was across the English Channel. Through Dunkirk, a city in northeast France. A mass evacuation would require funneling thousands upon thousands of soldiers, spread across hundreds of miles, into one space while the Nazis closed in with 1,800 tanks and 300 Stuka dive-bombers.
For days, Churchill resisted that escape plan. It seemed like a suicide mission. They’d be lucky to get 20,000 men home via the English Channel, let alone more than 300,000 Allied troops. But there was no other option. On May 23, Churchill met with the British monarch, King George VI, to brief him. Though a naval rescue operation were under way, pitifully few ships were ready to sail. The lo¬gistics of defending against the inevitable German air attack while ferrying the troops seemed impossi¬ble. Allied soldiers were scrambling to reach Dunkirk. They barely knew which direction to go.
“We must pray,” King George VI said. “This next Sunday, I’m calling for a national day of prayer.”
Famously nonreligious, Churchill was surely not looking at prayer as the answer. But he could hardly refuse the king. On May 24, King George VI addressed the nation: “Let us with one heart and soul, humbly but confidently, commit our cause to God and ask his aid, that we may valiantly defend the right as it is given to us to see it.”
On May 26, at Westminster Abbey, the Archbishop of Canterbury called on God to protect the troops. Across Great Britain, tens of thousands of people responded to the king’s call, uniting as never before. Cathedrals and churches, mosques and syna¬gogues were packed to overflowing. At Westminster Cathedral, the line extended for blocks and hundreds kept vigil outside. The people didn’t know exactly why they were praying, yet they prayed even so. “Nothing like this has ever happened before” was how one English newspaper described the scene.
The following day, though, the Ger¬man High Command reported, “The British army is encircled, and our troops are proceeding to its annihila¬tion.” The war, it appeared, was over for the Allies. Few would have argued otherwise. Certainly not James Brad¬ley, a British machine gunner. His unit had made it to Belgium before en¬countering overwhelming force from the Germans.
The soldiers were instructed to “get back to Dunkirk.” Where? Most British soldiers had probably never even heard of Dunkirk. Handed a rifle with a bayonet, Bradley was told he was on his own. “If they had said [get to] New York, I couldn’t have been more surprised,” Bradley recalled, years later. “I didn’t know where Dunkirk was.”
Everywhere, the roads were filled with British and French soldiers. Abandoned tanks and equipment lit¬tered the countryside. Thousands of refugees marched with escaping troops, some driving cars, everyone fleeing in advance of the Germans. From out of the skies would come the Stukas, strafing everything in sight. The scene was horrific.
But all was not as it appeared.
Something happened that histori¬ans, even 77 years later, can’t ex¬plain. With German tanks rumbling just 10 miles from Dunkirk, Hitler did the unthinkable. On May 24, the day King George VI called the nation to pray, Hitler inexplicably halted the offensive. For nearly three days, as England knelt as one, those tanks remained grounded. Nothing moved.
It was the exact window of time the British needed to form a defen¬sive perimeter, to temporarily fight back the Germans and establish a funnel for their troops to flow through to the English Channel.
Then came something else. Rain and clouds. German planes bombed Dunkirk on three separate days, but each time, for days afterward, the city was enveloped by inclement weather, making any effective follow-up from the Nazis difficult. What’s more, a breeze seemed to collect smoke emitted from the German bombs and distribute it over the area the British were using to load men into boats. The Allied exodus went undetected for days.
Meanwhile, word was spreading across England of the need for boats to cross the channel to Dunkirk. For what purpose no one was exact¬ly sure. Almost any vessel would do. Rowboats. Fishing trawlers. Tugs. Motorboats. Hundreds of would-be skippers responded. Some had nev¬er been out of sight of land before. Many of the crafts lacked compass¬es. None of them were armed.
Robert Hilton, a physical educa¬tion instructor, and Ted Shaw, a cin¬ema manager, were among those who answered the call. They joined a makeshift crew with a motorboat, Ryegate II. But when they reached the town of Ramsgate, off the tip of southern England, the only supplies they were given were two cans of water. Not even a cup to drink with. The two of them went to a pub, downed a pint, pocketed the glasses and set off toward France.
The English Channel is notoriously rough, choppy—no place for novice seamen—but once again something peculiar happened. The water Hilton and Shaw encountered was like that of a bathtub, with barely a ripple to disturb the journey. No one had ever seen anything like it. There were so many boats that in places the waters resembled a freeway at rush hour.
James Bradley, the machine gun¬ner, eventually reached De Panne, Belgium, just east of Dunkirk. Over the sand hills, he could see thousands of soldiers huddled, a line of small boats coming in to the shore and ferrying the men to larger vessels in the deeper water, guarded over by ships with guns. They’ll never get these people off here, he thought.
But it was happening. From De Panne and Dunkirk. A few boats at a time, offloading a few dozen men, then coming back for more, round the clock, a dizzying spectacle.
The Ryegate II limped into the wa¬ters off France, her engines broken, her propeller twisted by wreckage. Robert Hilton and Ted Shaw tied up to a larger boat and manned one of its lifeboats. For 17 hours straight, they rowed soldiers from shore to ship.
In the first five days of the rescue mission, more than 100,000 soldiers were evacuated. That still left more than 200,000 men, tens of thousands desperately fighting to hold the perimeter. They’d be the last to go.
Bradley never forgot the hero’s welcome he received when he at last reached the shores of England. The tables loaded with tea and buns. The crowds of people waving, cheering. This is England, he thought. You’re worth fighting for. Hilton and Shaw would also remem¬ber the cheers that greeted them. Exhausted, they and the other crew members somehow managed to get the crippled Ryegate II back to Eng¬land, throngs of jubilant well-wishers at every bridge on the Thames River.
By then, 338,000 soldiers had made it safely across the English Channel as well, thanks to the efforts of about 850 “little ships.” There was a feeling of determination, not surrender. Deliverance by a divine hand. It was exactly what the British soldiers—and civilians—needed to forge ahead. Especially so early in the war.
On June 4, Churchill went to the House of Commons to deliver the news. “We shall fight on the beaches,” he thundered. “We shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets.”
The Prime Minister called it a mira¬cle, a word he was not known to often use. There seemed no other word to describe it. Not just one, but a whole series of miracles. Without any one of them, the entire operation would have failed. Hitler halting the blitzkrieg. The thick, protective cloud cover. The English Channel growing still. The hundreds of tiny boats, appearing seemingly from out of nowhere.The Four Miracles of Dunkirk
During the darkest hours of World War II, King George VI called for a national day of prayer and churches across Great Britain were filled with people. See how those prayers were answered.
by Evan MillerFrom – Posted on Nov 14, 2017
You may have seen the hit movie Dunkirk, director Christopher Nolan’s powerful tribute to the real-life World War II drama that unfolded over 10 days in 1940, on the shores of France. But there’s more to the story than what was shown on the screen. To wit, four miracles that changed the course of the war.
For Winston Churchill, the new British prime minister, it all began with an early phone call on May 15 that roused him from sleep.
“We have been defeated,” said the French premier, Paul Reynaud. “We are beaten.”
Churchill was well aware of the Nazi advance. Days earlier, Adolf Hitler’s army had taken Holland, Belgium and Luxembourg, with Denmark and Norway already in his grip. England had sent more than 200,000 troops to France and Belgium. All for nothing, it now seemed.
“Surely it can’t have happened so soon?” the stunned Churchill said.
“The front is broken,” Reynaud said. “The Nazis are pouring through in great numbers.”
The Allies had severely miscalcu¬lated the path the Nazis would take. The Germans had swept south, through the supposedly impenetrable Ardennes Forest, a region the Allies had barely bothered to defend. Now British and French troops found themselves surrounded, in disarray. Their only possible escape was across the English Channel. Through Dunkirk, a city in northeast France. A mass evacuation would require funneling thousands upon thousands of soldiers, spread across hundreds of miles, into one space while the Nazis closed in with 1,800 tanks and 300 Stuka dive-bombers.
For days, Churchill resisted that escape plan. It seemed like a suicide mission. They’d be lucky to get 20,000 men home via the English Channel, let alone more than 300,000 Allied troops. But there was no other option. On May 23, Churchill met with the British monarch, King George VI, to brief him. Though a naval rescue operation were under way, pitifully few ships were ready to sail. The lo¬gistics of defending against the inevitable German air attack while ferrying the troops seemed impossi¬ble. Allied soldiers were scrambling to reach Dunkirk. They barely knew which direction to go.
“We must pray,” King George VI said. “This next Sunday, I’m calling for a national day of prayer.”
Famously nonreligious, Churchill was surely not looking at prayer as the answer. But he could hardly refuse the king. On May 24, King George VI addressed the nation: “Let us with one heart and soul, humbly but confidently, commit our cause to God and ask his aid, that we may valiantly defend the right as it is given to us to see it.”
On May 26, at Westminster Abbey, the Archbishop of Canterbury called on God to protect the troops. Across Great Britain, tens of thousands of people responded to the king’s call, uniting as never before. Cathedrals and churches, mosques and syna¬gogues were packed to overflowing. At Westminster Cathedral, the line extended for blocks and hundreds kept vigil outside. The people didn’t know exactly why they were praying, yet they prayed even so. “Nothing like this has ever happened before” was how one English newspaper described the scene.
The following day, though, the Ger¬man High Command reported, “The British army is encircled, and our troops are proceeding to its annihila¬tion.” The war, it appeared, was over for the Allies. Few would have argued otherwise. Certainly not James Brad¬ley, a British machine gunner. His unit had made it to Belgium before en¬countering overwhelming force from the Germans.
The soldiers were instructed to “get back to Dunkirk.” Where? Most British soldiers had probably never even heard of Dunkirk. Handed a rifle with a bayonet, Bradley was told he was on his own. “If they had said [get to] New York, I couldn’t have been more surprised,” Bradley recalled, years later. “I didn’t know where Dunkirk was.”
Everywhere, the roads were filled with British and French soldiers. Abandoned tanks and equipment lit¬tered the countryside. Thousands of refugees marched with escaping troops, some driving cars, everyone fleeing in advance of the Germans. From out of the skies would come the Stukas, strafing everything in sight. The scene was horrific.
But all was not as it appeared.
Something happened that histori¬ans, even 77 years later, can’t ex¬plain. With German tanks rumbling just 10 miles from Dunkirk, Hitler did the unthinkable. On May 24, the day King George VI called the nation to pray, Hitler inexplicably halted the offensive. For nearly three days, as England knelt as one, those tanks remained grounded. Nothing moved.
It was the exact window of time the British needed to form a defen¬sive perimeter, to temporarily fight back the Germans and establish a funnel for their troops to flow through to the English Channel.
Then came something else. Rain and clouds. German planes bombed Dunkirk on three separate days, but each time, for days afterward, the city was enveloped by inclement weather, making any effective follow-up from the Nazis difficult. What’s more, a breeze seemed to collect smoke emitted from the German bombs and distribute it over the area the British were using to load men into boats. The Allied exodus went undetected for days.
Meanwhile, word was spreading across England of the need for boats to cross the channel to Dunkirk. For what purpose no one was exact¬ly sure. Almost any vessel would do. Rowboats. Fishing trawlers. Tugs. Motorboats. Hundreds of would-be skippers responded. Some had nev¬er been out of sight of land before. Many of the crafts lacked compass¬es. None of them were armed.
Robert Hilton, a physical educa¬tion instructor, and Ted Shaw, a cin¬ema manager, were among those who answered the call. They joined a makeshift crew with a motorboat, Ryegate II. But when they reached the town of Ramsgate, off the tip of southern England, the only supplies they were given were two cans of water. Not even a cup to drink with. The two of them went to a pub, downed a pint, pocketed the glasses and set off toward France.
The English Channel is notoriously rough, choppy—no place for novice seamen—but once again something peculiar happened. The water Hilton and Shaw encountered was like that of a bathtub, with barely a ripple to disturb the journey. No one had ever seen anything like it. There were so many boats that in places the waters resembled a freeway at rush hour.
James Bradley, the machine gun¬ner, eventually reached De Panne, Belgium, just east of Dunkirk. Over the sand hills, he could see thousands of soldiers huddled, a line of small boats coming in to the shore and ferrying the men to larger vessels in the deeper water, guarded over by ships with guns. They’ll never get these people off here, he thought.
But it was happening. From De Panne and Dunkirk. A few boats at a time, offloading a few dozen men, then coming back for more, round the clock, a dizzying spectacle.
The Ryegate II limped into the wa¬ters off France, her engines broken, her propeller twisted by wreckage. Robert Hilton and Ted Shaw tied up to a larger boat and manned one of its lifeboats. For 17 hours straight, they rowed soldiers from shore to ship.
In the first five days of the rescue mission, more than 100,000 soldiers were evacuated. That still left more than 200,000 men, tens of thousands desperately fighting to hold the perimeter. They’d be the last to go.
Bradley never forgot the hero’s welcome he received when he at last reached the shores of England. The tables loaded with tea and buns. The crowds of people waving, cheering. This is England, he thought. You’re worth fighting for. Hilton and Shaw would also remem¬ber the cheers that greeted them. Exhausted, they and the other crew members somehow managed to get the crippled Ryegate II back to Eng¬land, throngs of jubilant well-wishers at every bridge on the Thames River.
By then, 338,000 soldiers had made it safely across the English Channel as well, thanks to the efforts of about 850 “little ships.” There was a feeling of determination, not surrender. Deliverance by a divine hand. It was exactly what the British soldiers—and civilians—needed to forge ahead. Especially so early in the war.
On June 4, Churchill went to the House of Commons to deliver the news. “We shall fight on the beaches,” he thundered. “We shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets.”
The Prime Minister called it a mira¬cle, a word he was not known to often use. There seemed no other word to describe it. Not just one, but a whole series of miracles. Without any one of them, the entire operation would have failed. Hitler halting the blitzkrieg. The thick, protective cloud cover. The English Channel growing still. The hundreds of tiny boats, appearing seemingly from out of nowhere.
What turned the tide? For the king, there was no question.
Just beautiful, Syl. Praise God! One of my favorite films is “The King’s Speech”. Another “miracle” is that King George’s speech therapist was a CSt. A song sung at the 2018 Parliament of World Religions has the refrain, “The greatest moments are still to come.”
This is so true, not only for ourselves, but for our neighbors, our country and our world!
You are so right Evan, we have to know the truth for everyone — ourselves, our friends and family, neighbors near and far in every corner of the world.
Mrs. Eddy (in S&H p. 571) said, “Clad in the panoply of love, human hatred cannot reach you.” Panoply means full, magnificent array of armor and protection. This protection extends beyond hatred to anything thought opposed to God, including lying fears that claim our safety, joy and wellness can be diminished. These fears cannot reach us or any one in God’s family. I declare that we are all fully clad in the panoply of Love!
Thank you, Evan, and thank you Syl for the Dunkirk story. Powerful stuff—-prayer!
Syl from California, thank you for sharing! Thank you all so much.
Beautiful inspiration! Thank you.