Many years ago, when I got my first teaching job, I joined the nearest Christian Science church. Immediately, I was assigned to the nursery, where babies and children too young for Sunday School are cared for. I had only been there a little while when a mom and dad brought in a yelling boy of about two. He clearly didn’t want to be there, and his parents were embarrassed. I took the little boy aside, knelt down, and looked him in the eye. I calmly and tenderly said, “I am not impressed. You can yell all you like, but I am not impressed. That’s because I see you as God’s beautiful, joyful child. That’s what impresses me.”
I kept talking to him like this, and after a while he calmed down. His mom and dad left to go to church. The little boy and I had a wonderful hour together, and when his parents came to pick him up, they were very happy. From that time on, he came to the nursery joyfully and willingly.
Recently, I had some chores to do, and I overdid it. When I finally stopped to rest, I was aching all over. The encounter I just related occurred to me, and I said out loud, “I am not impressed. What I just did was helpful and useful. What does impress me is the idea that spiritually, I am God’s beloved child.” In a few minutes, the muscles stopped aching.
Through our spiritual sense we can successfully see through the material senses and be impressed only by God.
Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, uses Mind as another name for God when she writes in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, “When it is learned that the spiritual sense, and not the material, conveys the impressions of Mind to man, then being will be understood and found to be harmonious” (p. 214). So, through our spiritual sense we can successfully see through the material senses and be impressed only by God, Mind, who is giving us the accurate impression of ourselves and what is happening around us.
As Christian Scientists, we learn that what the material senses tell us is not accurate. We know this from experience with illusions, delusions, misapprehensions, mirages, deceptive images. What is accurate is the spiritual sense. We know this from experience with love, integrity, honesty. When the book of Genesis speaks about man being made in God’s image and likeness, this is referring to God as Spirit (not matter) and man, consequently, as spiritual (not material). “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them” (Genesis 1:27).
Our challenge, then, is to not be impressed by what the material senses are insisting on, whether it be a yelling child or aching muscles. Each image is incorrect and needs to be corrected by spiritual sense. The spiritual sense is all that can actually impress us. When we see this clearly, and gracefully and understandingly trust it, a rebelling child, aching muscles, and any other disturbances will calm down, and peace and health will be restored.
