One Saturday a number of years ago, I was working in a Christian Science Reading Room. I had served until closing time, but I wanted to stay longer. I loved being able to pray and study at the Reading Room. With a one-year-old and a three-year-old at home, I rarely had time alone. But on this particular day my husband was caring for our sons, and he assured me that I didn’t need to hurry home. I stayed at the Reading Room and continued praying, knowing that God, divine Mind, would show me what I needed to know.
At the time I had a third baby on the way, and soon I began to feel very sick. At first I was scared because I was a 30-minute drive from home and from my husband’s help. Fear tried to convince me that the symptoms were serious. But I knew, as a student of Christian Science, that God is Life, and that there is no power opposed to God. In the Bible we read, “God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind” (II Timothy 1:7). I knew that neither the fear nor the symptoms belonged to me, because they had not come from God, and I was God’s spiritual expression, as we all actually are.
I looked up the answer to the question “What is man?” in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy. In the Bible and Mrs. Eddy’s writings, man is often used as a generic term that applies to all of us. The first part of that answer reads: “Man is not matter; he is not made up of brain, blood, bones, and other material elements. The Scriptures inform us that man is made in the image and likeness of God. Matter is not that likeness. The likeness of Spirit cannot be so unlike Spirit. Man is spiritual and perfect; and because he is spiritual and perfect, he must be so understood in Christian Science” (p. 475). The power and truth of those words assured me that I was not at the mercy of a mortal belief in sickness, because I was not mortal or material but immortal and spiritual.
