In my previous employment, I oversaw the distribution and handling of industrial chemicals in various production facilities and instructed individuals in the plants how to use the chemicals correctly. Normally they were delivered in large containers by semi trucks, then distributed through automated systems, so I would never need to handle the chemicals. But one day, a small company needed the chemicals blended by hand from smaller five-gallon containers. With caution, I proceeded as was necessary to perform the task, but one of the containers slipped from my grasp and dropped to the floor, and the contents splashed on my face and arms.
Aware of the many warnings about such happenings and how to respond, I went to the small sink in the boiler room and splashed water on my face and arms.
I also immediately affirmed to myself that as God’s pure and perfect idea, I could never be threatened or harmed or fearful of impending danger. The Christian Science textbook, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy, tells us: “The admission to one’s self that man is God’s own likeness sets man free to master the infinite idea” (p. 90). That was exactly what I was doing—admitting my own spiritual selfhood in God, not subject to claims of matter, but governed by the infinite power of divine Love.
