Stopping domestic abuse through prayer

We were renting a little apartment for the weekend in a college community in San Diego. One night, I was awakened by a couple of college kids that were yelling at each other right outside our window which was near an alley way. My first thought was can’t they do their screaming somewhere else, I am trying to sleep. They were very drunk like many of the college kids in that community. As I looked out the window, I saw the boy was pushing the girl and was very angry. I heard him yell at the girl that he was going to beat her up. The girl yelled back at him and told him to stop. She tried to plead with him not to hit her. The thought came to me you want to be a healer now is your chance to put your prayers into action.

The first thing I did was affirm that right there in that alley way that all that was going on was God and His complete harmony. I saw that the picture of man that I was seeing was a lie and I did not need to be impressed by it. Man I knew was the child of God and was given dominion. God’s child is not abusive but kind and loving. Alcohol was not a God and man did not need to fall down and worship it. I thought of what Mary Baker Eddy says in her book Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, “There is no power apart from God. Omnipotence has all-power, and to acknowledge any other power is to dishonor God.”(228:25-27) Alcohol then had no power to make man drunk or to cause him to be drunk and disorderly. I refused to believe that man was out of control. Since God is always in control His idea must be in control. God good is the all and the only there is nothing else.

Within about 15 minutes or so the couple stopped yelling and calmed down. They both left calmly in separate directions. A few months later I was talking to a woman who lived in the apartment in which I stayed that weekend. She said that for several weeks many of the residences of that apartment building had heard this couple fighting night after night. There had been a lot abusive behavior going on. However, since that night when I prayed, they have not heard any yelling or evidence of abusive behavior.

This incident proved to me that disorderly behavior is not the natural state of man. Man as the child of God can act only the way God created him loving, gentle, and kind. Since God created man do be this way we should expect nothing else.

The Bible says, What is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him? For thou hast made him a little lower than the angels, and hast crowned him with glory and honour.” (Ps. 8:4-5) This concept of man is a much different one then that is often presented to us. However it is the correct one. It was the way Jesus viewed man. Jesus never saw a sick or a sinning man. He saw man the way God created him perfect and whole. Everywhere he went the sick and the sinful responded to his prayer. Wherever Jesus was the community was certainly blessed and healed.

Our community needs us right this very minute it needs our prayers. It needs our unselfishness. We can pray for the community and we can expect results. Our community is what we see of it. We can either view it full of crime and restlessness or we can see it like Jesus did peaceful and tranquil. It is up to us and we can start right this very moment.