There’s a story in the Bible of Jesus commanding a man, “Arise, take up thy bed, and go unto thine house” (Matthew 9:6). Jesus certainly was not encouraging him to continue “sleeping”—or even sitting—on a bed of beliefs in sickness and limitation.
In thinking about this, I was reminded of when my son was in his 20s working as a cowboy. He carried his bedroll with him wherever he went. It was his official home for over a year, and whenever he visited, he brought it with him, establishing his own portable “house” on the floor. In Middle Eastern and some other countries today, as in the past, it is not uncommon for one to carry some sort of bedroll or simple mattress around as “home.”
Mary Baker Eddy expands upon the concept of home, or house, in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by replacing the word Lord with Love and house with consciousness in the 23rd Psalm, to exemplify a spiritual sense of home. It reads “… and I will dwell in the house [the consciousness] of [Love] for ever” (p. 578).
Jesus commanded the man to pick up the mental bed to which he was attached and freely rise . . .
Paul tells us something similar—that “we live, and move, and have our being” in God (Acts 17:28). In divine Science, God is the one consciousness, or Mind, in which we live and move and have our being, and man is the reflection of that consciousness. The question, in relation to our “bed,” “house,” or “home,” might then be: Are we living, moving, resting on a bed of erroneous mortal beliefs, or are we living, moving, being, on a bed (consciousness) of Mind, Soul, Spirit, Principle, Truth, Life, and Love?
Since we think and act according to the foundation (or house) where our thought and understanding rests, and from which our expressions of health or sickness arise, I think of this healing as Jesus commanding the man to pick up the mental bed to which he was attached and freely rise with a fresher, higher, more truth-based consciousness. In doing this, he instantly leaped up and walked with joy!
The problem is not the sin or physical disease in a man. Man, as the image and likeness of God, is pure and perfect. The “sin,” or so-called problem, is the bed of erroneous mortal beliefs about man that one carries around and rests on. Jesus saw the perfect man and the perfect bed! With that same understanding, the man rose with a dominion and freedom that rested on a consciousness based on Truth, not mortal error. It was not the man who needed to be healed, but rather the bed of thought on which the man lay.
Mrs. Eddy states: “Rise in the conscious strength of the spirit of Truth to overthrow the plea of mortal mind, alias matter, arrayed against the supremacy of Spirit. Blot out the images of mortal thought and its beliefs in sickness and sin. Then, when thou art delivered to the judgment of Truth, Christ, the judge will say, ‘Thou art whole!’” (Science and Health, pp. 390–391).
This story and others referring to one’s bed help remind me that a call for healing, whether it be for myself or others, is really a call to heal mortal beliefs, thus revealing man as he already and eternally is now: the perfect, spiritual image and likeness of God.
Sylvia Messner lives in Cave Creek, Arizona.
