It was some time ago, but this experience has really stayed with me. I was in college and facing a very difficult conversation with a professor about withdrawing from his course with a passing or failing mark. I was reading page 265 of Science and Health, where “a more expansive love” is linked with “a higher and more permanent peace.” It became clear to me that if I were to find the peace I needed, my sense of love needed to be expansive enough to include this professor, in spite of his unkind and unhelpful behavior.

Then I went into the meeting. It started out in the same way as before, with the same impossible set of alternatives that threatened to affect my whole academic career. But drawing on the insights I was getting from reading the Bible Lesson, I found myself quietly explaining what these alternatives meant. He suddenly understood the situation differently and completely changed his mind, saying he didn’t want to ruin my GPA. He signed the form I needed right away and the situation was resolved. Rather than seeing myself as a victim of unkindness and bad practices, I was seeing both of us in the context of God’s kingdom, and this had immediate results.