A little fellow I know, called Peter, is three years old and attends story time at a couple of the local libraries. He packs a snack in his backpack and off he marches with his mother. On a Thursday morning, he arrived and took his place in the circle of children to find that the “story lady” had chosen a book about a mouse that worries about nearly everything. To warm up her young crowd to the concept, she asked a few children if they ever worry, and what they worry about. When she got to Peter, she repeated, “Peter, do you ever worry?” He beamed back, “Noooo! God loves me!” The library fell into stunned silence, for no one, not even his mother, expected that answer. After the silence passed, they began the story, and afterward in the parking lot my daughter (Peter’s mother) fielded a few questions from another mother about Peter’s Sunday School!
This little exchange has often come back to me in my work as a Christian Science practitioner. Most patients, when calling for treatment through prayer, begin with something or other that is worrying them. There is a fundamental truth to Peter’s conclusion: If we are aware of God’s great love for us and of His perfect and attentive care for the entire universe, we simply must not worry.
So why do we? Worry is a form of animal magnetism, a term used in Christian Science that covers all the supposed evil or detrimental thoughts and scenarios that would pull our thought away from the harmony God has established and is forever maintaining. It is a way of referring to an opposite to the peace of spiritual reality. Over and over in the lives of those who turn to God for healing and regeneration, animal magnetism has been proved to be false and powerless. Mary Baker Eddy uses this term in her writings, and one way she describes it is “a mere negation” (Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 102).
