It is our duty to be healthy. Yes, it is just as much our duty to express health as it is to express love. Health is a spiritual quality of God just as love is— and gentleness, joy, and peace. Consequently, if we have an obligation to express these divine qualities—and we do—we have an equal obligation to express health.
Health is not something man has in and of himself. It belongs to God. Man reflects health as the spiritual image of God. You have probably heard someone say, "Oh, I'm a very healthy person." What a snare this is! If we think health is a personal, physical characteristic, we mistake.
The world is constantly telling us that health is a condition of the material body—that drugs, exercise, and diet maintain health. This is part of the carnal mind's inversion of reality. The material senses get everything backward. Mrs. Eddy tells us plainly, "Health is not a condition of matter, but of Mind ...." Science and Health, p. 120; We must cease looking to the body as the abode of life and health and recognize that these are totally spiritual—that health is a quality of the one divine Life, infinite Spirit. This turning away from corporeality involves a deep, inner striving to comprehend our incorporeal spiritual selfhood as the individual manifestation of God's qualities, as Deity's perfectly ordered image, structured by His will. The health of this image is eternally intact. It is as unwavering as Truth.
