Article August 6, 1984 Issue

Don't swing a broom at a bat

JOHN E. CHEAL

For the second night in a row something flashed before my eyes as I sat reading in my mountain cabin. The first night, thinking it was a stray bird, I had turned out the room light, opened the door to the patio, put the lights on out there, and hoped it would find its way out.

But the second night I saw a black shadow land on the fireplace and crawl behind a large picture frame. It wasn't a bird; it was a bat. Picking up a broom, I went after the unwelcome intruder. But it easily eluded my wild swings. Then I sat down and began to do some prayerful thinking about the situation, as I should have done in the first place.

The opening statement in the Bible reads, "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth." And later in the chapter is the declaration "And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind: and God saw that it was good."^{Gen.1:1, 25.} As I thought about this I remembered also a statement in Science and Health, where Mrs. Eddy writes, "All of God's creatures, moving in the harmony of Science, are harmless, useful, indestructible."^{Science and Health, p. 514.}