The ant and the sun

The Bible begins with two stories of creation. The first, in Genesis 1:1–2:3 , speaks of God creating all, and man in His image and likeness. This creation is perfect and complete. The second story, starting in Genesis 2:4 , begins with matter. God is included in this record, but is no longer the only creator. Evil enters the picture and shares power.

The human mind embraces this second story of creation. Just look around. Lives are lost to gun violence. Severe weather disrupts or destroys lives. Accidents happen daily. Poverty is prevalent.

When I was younger, I struggled with how any of this could occur in a perfect creation. As much as I wanted the first story of creation to be true, I faced the possibility that maybe it wasn’t. If God’s ideas have existed forever, I wondered, why did we find ourselves plopped into this experience to work through this puzzle? Hadn’t infinity already afforded us enough opportunity to achieve the understanding that this human experience was supposed to bring? Where did the first material belief come from in a perfect spiritual universe? And most important, why does anyone appear to suffer or pass away too early?

I remember when a Christian Science teacher told me not to forget these questions—just to put them aside for a while. I loved knowing that it was OK to question, and that it was also OK not to let the questions bog me down and impede my spiritual progress. All along, healings were taking place in my experience—verifiable changes from discordant physical, financial, and relationship conditions to healthy and harmonious ones.

One of these was a healing a doctor called miraculous. Very far along into my first pregnancy, the doctor wanted to hospitalize me because of a serious anemic condition, but knowing I was a Christian Scientist and would want time to address the issue through prayer, he told me instead to come back in two weeks so that he could check to make sure that the condition hadn’t gotten any worse. He explained that it was impossible for the red blood cells to multiply to a healthy level during that short time, but if the status quo was maintained, I wouldn’t need to be hospitalized.

Prayerfully, I sought to see more clearly myself and this precious child I was welcoming as completely spiritual. I affirmed that one idea doesn’t exist within another since God is the only creator, and that God supplies all good, making deficiency an impossibility. I returned to my appointment confident in the healing—and the doctor rather incredulously reported that the cell count was completely normal. This, and other healings, sustained me and steadied my spiritual progress. I knew I was on the right track.

True to what the Christian Science teacher said, I didn’t forget my questions. In fact, some time later I gained perspective on them from a most unlikely source: an ant! The ant’s world is so small. The insect traverses a miniscule patch of earth over a lifetime. If it could crane its neck and look up at the sun millions of miles above, it would have no way of understanding the principle of thermonuclear fusion and of the energy it produces. For all intents, the sun above would be wholly unknown to the ant. Yet, this doesn’t stop the ant from receiving the warmth and light the sun effortlessly emits, and which is beneficial to its life.

Is our human experience really so very different? We may see to the ends of the earth and beyond and revel in scientific and technological advances, but I suspect the totality of our perceived world is still a pretty small patch in the infinite scheme of things. There is a truth and reality beyond what the material senses can discern. As much as we crane to catch a human vision of the infinite, of true spirituality, the human mind and physical senses will always come up short. Yet, just like the ant receives the sun’s warmth, we are receiving the full blessings of spiritual existence, right here and now, even before our understanding catches up.

There is truth and reality beyond what the material senses can discern.

Here is where the analogy with the ant ends, however. Christ Jesus came to make divine creation knowable and provable. We can stretch far beyond what the physical senses detect, and what the human mind comprehends, because of his teaching and example. Jesus knew and proved that sin, sickness, disease, and death have no place in the divine, wholly good creation of God. Jesus never looked at man as coordinate with the second record of creation. In Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, Mary Baker Eddy explained this pure vision: “Jesus beheld in Science the perfect man, who appeared to him where sinning mortal man appears to mortals. In this perfect man the Saviour saw God’s own likeness, and this correct view of man healed the sick” (pp. 476–477 ).

Isn’t our search for understanding much like the parable of the tares and wheat of which Jesus spoke (see Matthew 13:24–30 )? Our glimpses of true spirituality are the wheat, the tender emerging of divine ideas, fragile in their newness to us and needing to be protected. The tares are the “big questions” mentioned at the beginning of this article that have nagged mankind through the centuries. Instead of trampling the tender sprouts of inspiration by trying to extract every question and doubt from consciousness before our understanding is ready for it, perhaps we need to let the two grow side by side for a while. This is what we’re doing when we put our questions on hold for a time, taking care not to let them knock us off our spiritual track.

The ant and sun analogy suggests that all the answers might not fully come right away. But a glimpse of spiritual reality? Absolutely. The Christ, God’s message to His children, reveals reality here and now. And a genuine glimpse of this reality is all it takes for healing to take place! That glimpse becomes clearer and brighter when we quietly commune with God, strive for spiritual understanding, listen with a humble heart, and willingly put aside material thinking—as we turn from the second to the first record of creation, from the material sense of existence to the spiritual. In so doing, we are turning to the source of Jesus’ own enlightenment—to the knowledge of “perfect God and perfect man” (Science and Health, p. 259 ), and of creation as being whole, complete, and permanent. What magnificent transformations and healings then take place! And all along, even during those times when darkness seems overwhelming, we are receiving the full blessings of the divine creation.

Mary Baker Eddy wrote, “To material sense, this divine universe is dim and distant, gray in the sombre hues of twilight; but anon the veil is lifted, and the scene shifts into light” (Science and Health, p. 513 ). Christ Jesus came to lift that veil and help us see beyond what the material senses can discern. The Christ, with us today, is that light which shines on all, revealing spiritual reality here and now. No waiting period required!