Spiritual Short

Before our grandchildren could talk, our daughter taught them to deal with their minor toddler falls with a simple “Brush it off!” She illustrated this by brushing her hands together, an action the children quickly picked up and often used as a means of showing that they understood when something was a nonissue. Brushing those hands together has become, for me, symbolic of brushing off the “dust man,” the mortal man described in the second chapter of Genesis.

I was driving to the beach to go surfing, when I saw a myna bird lying in the middle of the road. After pulling over, I picked up the bird and found it was still alive but not moving.

In a recent Christian Science Quarterly Bible Lesson, the familiar story of Eve listening to the suggestion of the serpent hit me like a bolt of lightning. In Genesis 3, the serpent subtly draws Eve into a dialogue that results in both Eve and Adam eating fruit from the tree of knowledge of good and evil—fruit that the Lord God had said would make them mortal (see verses 1–6 ).

Two years ago , my family and I moved across the country. While it was a move that would prove to have so much good in store for us, I was now much farther from my parents, and that pained me.

As part of a Bible study group, I recently looked more closely at Jesus’ parable of the kingdom of heaven being “like unto a net, that was cast into the sea, and gathered of every kind: which, when it was full, they drew to shore, and sat down, and gathered the good into vessels, but cast the bad away” ( Matthew 13:47, 48 ). This started me thinking about what I had been doing of late—dragging up old memories and sorting them: the good, spiritually based ones to keep, and the hurtful, mortal ones to let go.

A few years ago I was texting with a business colleague late one evening, and she apologized for not getting back to me sooner, saying, “Another kid has joined the flu train and it’s getting ugly. ” She had three young children and a very active household, and I could hear the stress and worry she was feeling about the coming days.

“The very circumstance, which your suffering sense deems wrathful and afflictive, Love can make an angel entertained unawares” (Mary Baker Eddy, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 574 ).

There was a time when I felt uncomfortable with conversations concerning medical topics, but I was hesitant to share what I had learned about healing through Christian Science. I decided to pray more deeply about Jesus’ message, “Love thy neighbor as thyself” ( Matthew 22:39 ).

A few years ago I was faced with challenges at home, at the school where I teach, and in many other areas. I felt as though I were hanging by a thread.

I woke up happy, and we had plans to do something fun amidst the shelter-in-place. We were going to venture out to a nearby farm stand to make an “essential” purchase of fresh-picked strawberries so we could make some yummy jam.