Sentinel Watch December 5, 2011 Issue

Winter weather blues–or seasons of good?

Linda Distel

It’s that time of year again. As the northern hemisphere moves deeper into winter, media chatter reminds us of impending colder weather, shorter days, and bare landscape. Then there’s a host of illnesses sold to us through advertisements and even brought up in conversations with well-meaning friends. Often, it’s even accepted that we’ll catch the “winter blues,” in the form of lethargy and depression. Essentially, we’re encouraged to believe that comfort and well-being are transitory, ephemeral, and dependent on the time of year.

Is there anything we can do, besides hole up and look forward to spring? Yes: Christian Science offers each of us unchangeable, spiritually based comfort and well-being that rebuffs the suggestion that winter weather can take away our health or happiness.

To show how to ward against outside influences, Christ Jesus gave a simple but profound parable: “No man can enter into a strong man’s house, and spoil his goods, except he will first bind the strong man; and then he will spoil his house” (Mark 3:27). Mary Baker Eddy, the discoverer of Christian Science, expanded on this reasoning: “Mortal mind is ‘the strong man,’ which must be held in subjection before its influence upon health and morals can be removed. This error conquered, we can despoil ‘the strong man’ of his goods,—namely, of sin and disease” (Science and Health, p. 400). It’s important that we bind the strong man in our own thinking: the limiting predictions about the winter season peddled in the media and magnified in public thought.