No aging process for God's ideas

While attending a 55th high school class reunion, I was confronted with many suggestions of aging and related physical complaints from my classmates. I also visited a family member who had recently moved into a care facility. Several times a day, I went off by myself for quiet prayer to clear my thoughts so that I would see only God’s perfect man. 

I had left my West Highland White terrier with a friend who cared for him while I was away on trips. On my way home from the airport, I went to my friend’s house to take my little pet home. But Duffy didn’t look the same as when I’d left him the week before. His eyes were dull, ears back, waggly tail tucked, and he moved slowly, like a much older dog. My friend informed me that Duffy was going blind, losing his hearing, and had arthritis in his hind legs. When I asked her how he did on their morning walks, she said she hadn’t been able to take him out because she had arthritis in her knees.

As I was leaving, Duffy didn’t jump into my car as usual, but had to be lifted into it. While driving home, I tried to deal with fear for Duffy’s well-being. I realized my first responsibility as a Christian Scientist was to get rid of all thoughts of age and debility, because I knew that negative thoughts shut out healing. 

During the next four days, Duffy’s bodily functions were not normal and he was listless. I prayed to see him as God’s perfect expression. Mary Baker Eddy says in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, “Mind is the source of all movement, and there is no inertia to retard or check its perpetual and harmonious action” (p. 283). She also says, “Mind’s infinite ideas run and disport themselves” (p. 514). Disport means to move happily, without exertion. Also in the same book is this statement: “All of God’s creatures, moving in the harmony of Science, are harmless, useful, indestructible” (p. 514).

God’s creatures, being without the constraints of time, are therefore exempt from the penalties that go with it.

While my prayers were comforting to me, I saw little improvement in Duffy, and I earnestly prayed for God to unfold what I needed to know. Then came the realization of my deep fear that I would lose Duffy and be left alone. My husband of almost 52 years had passed on the year before, and I had never lived on my own without a companion. This prospect of being alone seemed more than I could handle by myself, so I called a Christian Science practitioner to pray for us. I was readily reassured that I was never alone and could never be without God’s presence and love.

One morning while studying the Christian Science Bible Lesson, I noticed the word alone in a completely different way, as a combination of “all” and “one.” Webster’s Encyclopedic Dictionary defines alone as “all one, all wholly one.” What a marvelous thought! Man is never alone or solitary, but wholly one with God, complete within, filled up full with the allness of God, needing nothing. All sense of aloneness and longing for my husband simply melted away.

I also learned that there is no progression toward aging or death for God’s ideas. Mrs. Eddy tells us, “Immortality, exempt from age or decay, has a glory of its own,—the radiance of Soul” (Science and Health, p. 247). In Job 11:17 we read, “Thine age shall be clearer than the noonday; thou shalt shine forth, thou shalt be as the morning.”

Aging has to do with time, which Mrs. Eddy defines in part as “mortal measurements” (Science and Health, p. 595). She tells us: “Never record ages. Chronological data are no part of the vast forever. Time-tables of birth and death are so many conspiracies against manhood and womanhood. Except for the error of measuring and limiting all that is good and beautiful, man would enjoy more than threescore years and ten, and still maintain his vigor, freshness, and promise” (Science and Health, p. 246).

I clearly saw that God’s creatures, being without the constraints of time, are therefore exempt from the penalties that go with it. That meant my little pet and I were free from all the so-called laws of age, loss of faculties, and decrepitude. Within two days, Duffy was his playful self with bright eyes and a wagging tail. He ran and disported himself freely, and so did I. Through this experience with Duffy, I was challenged to recognize my true Christ-expressing selfhood—whole, free, and ever at one with God.