For many people today it is natural to see life as cyclical—to assume that if something lives, it has a life cycle. The basic metaphor for this is the day. Just as we cycle through the day, from dawn to high noon to evening to night, so we believe ourselves to cycle through life—a life which has a distinct beginning (birth) and ending (death).
Yet despite the appearance of life cycles all around us, measured by the Earth’s rotation on its axis and revolution around the sun, from the point of view of the globe and the sun, there is no beginning or ending of the day. And the Bible presents a perspective of Life as Spirit, God, without beginning or ending. Isaiah, the Hebrew prophet, assures us that God “will swallow up death in victory” (Isaiah 25:8). St. Paul echoes that very truth in his first letter to the Christians at Corinth, thus breaking the hold of “years,” a time measurement, on life (see I Corinthians 15:54).
Conscious of this, Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer of Christian Science, encourages us to move, mentally, out of that false belief in life cycles. In fact, she is radically outspoken in this regard. She writes in the Christian Science textbook: “Never record ages. . . . Time-tables of birth and death are so many conspiracies against manhood and womanhood” (Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 246).
