Article January 6, 1986 Issue

Green pastures—the spiritual consciousness of good

SUSAN HUNT DEAL

A friend of mine was on an airplane once when the pilot warned the passengers to be prepared for turbulence due to a violent storm. After some time had passed, the pilot gave a second and then a third warning, and my friend got busy and prayed about the situation.

As she had been taught in Christian Science, she affirmed that God is Love, a saving, guiding presence that we can always call on. In her Sunday School class the day before, the class had explored the promise of God's protecting power as described in the twenty-third Psalm: "He maketh me to lie down in green pastures."^{Ps. 23:2.} There on the airplane she saw that "green pastures," serene, calm, and full of peace, were actually a mental environment, a spiritual consciousness of good. And in this case, God was making her lie down, or yield to His abundant peace, not to an accident!

When jolted with the fear that many human minds controlled her destiny, she affirmed with great conviction that God, the infinite divine Mind, could not be dwarfed by any prediction or opinion of the human mind of the pilot, the weather reporter, the air traffic controller, or even the plane designer. She wholeheartedly affirmed, "Thou shalt have no other gods before me,"^{Ex. 20:3.} as the First Commandment states.