The Christian Science Journal has brought health and spirituality into the lives of individuals and families since 1883. Instructive articles and verified reports of Christian healing give the reader a working understanding of the divine Principle and practice of Christian Science. Each monthly issue also contains a worldwide directory of Christian Science practitioners, teachers, churches, Reading Rooms, organizations at universities and colleges, nurses, and Committees on Publication serving the public. 

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Midnight moments break into light

Jeffrey Hildner

The Empire State Building is now the tallest building in New York City. Just like it used to be. It’s sad but true. Tragedy made it so.

On clear nights, or foggy ones, I can see it from my apartment on the Upper West Side—just off in the middle distance, standing at once solid and ethereal in the noble, jagged skyline of the city. It glows brightly every night, awash in magical ever-changing colored light. On most nights, the lights turn off precisely at midnight. The Empire State goes black.

But, unlike the Twin Towers, its majestic cousins farther down the island, whose lights were brutally extinguished last September, it reappears with the dawn light. The Empire strikes back.

The thing about darkness, I’m learning in my own life, is that it can, and always must, give way to light. Trials and tribulations, woe and strife, heartbreak, fear, and disaster sometimes stand between us and promised lands, but, the bottom-line, the rock-solid core-of-the-universe truth, is that God, divine Spirit, Love, is right here with us to comfort, protect, and save.

We all know where we were a year ago, September 11, 2001. I was in a hotel in Texas. My wife was in New York and watched from our apartment window as the second tower collapsed. My brother was closer. We didn’t hear from him for two days. Finally, an e-mail: “I got very close to work which is 2 blocks from the towers (they were still standing and in flames). The streets were filled with people, and the officials were telling us to evacuate. As I walked back home I eventually saw the towers collapse. I heard the screams as I was walking away from the City Hall area when the first tower collapsed. I walked back to the spot where I was earlier and after five minutes of just being incredulous at seeing a single tower remaining, that tower collapsed before my eyes.”

He escaped. Thousands of others, in New York, Washington, D.C., and a remote field in Pennsylvania, didn’t. Grief has taken its toll.

What can you and I do? Words are glib. But, fortunately, God isn’t. God is a Rock. “For I am with thee, saith the Lord, to save thee,” says the Bible.1

One thing I like to do is pray for ten minutes at 11:55 p.m. To bridge one day to the next, to honor the midnight moment. If I’m home, I gaze out at the City, eyeing the Empire State Building, the luminous, limestone sentinel of freedom. I watch its light go out. And pray—for myself, my family, and the world. I silently, in my thinking, replace fear with conviction. A conviction that God, Life/Spirit, is all there really is. The only power. The only presence. The totally reliable, you-can-feel-it-with-you-here-and-now sustaining and safe-guarding Principle of existence. God has infinite power to alter and better humanity in deep and practical ways.

In these prayers, I strike back against fear. I mentally fight for peace. I call on divine healing-angels to release people everywhere from grief, trauma, haunting images, horror, and darkness.

For me, the Empire State’s midnight-light moment signifies prayer-power, the beginning of a new day. Safe, full of promise and peace. I feel that a divine silent might, a blanket of terror-neutralizing love, wraps us in Her arms.

“When I see the city from my window—no, I don’t feel how small I am—,” says a hero of Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead, “but I feel that if a war came to threaten this, I would like to throw myself into space, over the city, and protect these buildings with my body.”2

It’s possible. You and I can heal and protect the world together through spirituality and prayer. Through uplifted hearts that commune with God.

Something mightier than the Empire State Building stands guard over the City, over your life and mine—God. Divine Mind is guiding, guarding, and governing—in beautiful, good ways—every aspect of human action. What we’re called on to do is honor and see this. “Immortal Mind, governing all,” says Mary Baker Eddy in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, “must be acknowledged as supreme in the physical realm, so-called, as well as in the spiritual.” 3

What’s the impact of this acknowledgement? Peace. Safety. Rescue. Renewal. Prevention. Neutralization of fear and the negative shock waves of physical violence and disaster. A surefire, tangible feeling of God’s calming, healing power. Every month of the year. Through all the midnight moments of our interconnected lives.

1 Jer. 30:11. 2 Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead (New York: Scribner, Classics, 2000), p. 464.. 3 Science and Health, p. 427.

Featured articles from previous issues of The Christian Science Journal

The Promise of Church in the 21st Century from the August 2002 Issue of the Journal
Animal Magnetism--Don't be dupedfrom the July 2002 Issue of the Journal
Commitment to Community: Enlarging our sense of community from the June 2002 Issue of the Journal
Spirituality and Health: Spiritual healing at a distance. from the May 2002 Issue of the Journal
From ‘bad trip' to healing: Only God could have brought about such a change. from the April 2002 Issue of the Journal
Mrs. Eddy as businesswoman: She worked on a 24/7 basis from the March 2002 Issue of the Journal
'Spirituality: The weapon that never fails' from the January 2002 issue of the Journal
'We need to have chaplins in there with those medical teams!' from the December 2001 issue of the Journal
Forgiveness that doesn't keep score by David Robertson from the November 2001 issue of the Journal.
The anchor of spiritual identity by Rob Gilbert from the October 2001 issue of the Journal.
Our son just couldn't sit still by Sara Hoagland Hunter from the September 2001 issue of the Journal.
Forgiveness after rape from the August 2001 issue of the Journal.
Break new ground by David C. Kennedy from the July 2001 issue of the Journal.
Faith that breaks down walls by Margaret Rogers from the June 2001 issue of the Journal.
The workplace as holy ground from the May 2001 issue of the Journal.
Emerging into Spirit’ An interview with Artis Lane from the April 2001 issue of the Journal.
On intimacy from the March 2001 issue of the Journal.
The healing power of forgiveness by Rosemary Thornton from the February 2001 issue of the Journal.
A way to help with AIDS in Africa by Margaret Rogers from the January 2001 issue of the Journal.

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