Saving the innocent—one life at a time
Since I’ve been living on a small farm in a rural area with my family, I have been presented with matters of life and death much more frequently than when I lived in town. It’s a bit like people in areas affected by violence and turmoil not of their choosing. I did not decide one day that I was metaphysically ready to face bigger challenges, or that I wanted to have such experiences imposed on my life. I face challenges and pray about them because they are demanding my attention. Most of us probably face challenges in much the same way.
This year, as in the past, I have often prayed about the well-being of the animals on our small farm. I had been praying over several days about some problems, which included the accidental death of a little chick and a young goat. I had also heard various disturbing news items, particularly a report that was issued about the many cattle killed in a South Dakota blizzard last fall. The material message seemed to be that the innocent suffer. In prayer, I rejected this and refused to be trapped into believing that evil could triumph over the innocent. I realized that our God-given identity is spiritually based and can’t be taken from us.
However challenging the material evidence may seem, all of God’s ideas—you, me, the people in Syria and other troubled areas, the many creatures in this world—are spiritual. And as such, God’s innocent spiritual ideas are safe in good. Spiritually seen, the innocent cannot suffer or die. They are the manifestation of God, the perfect and eternal. They are harmoniously subject to God’s good will “as in heaven, so on earth,” as Mary Baker Eddy tells us in her spiritual interpretation of the Lord’s Prayer (Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, pp. 16–17 ). Each innocent thought is the eternal expression of divine Mind, Life—a complete, powerful, active idea.
Jesus’ mission was to enable us to see that God has all these situations ever in His care. The Christ “comes to the flesh to destroy incarnate error” (Science and Health, p. 583 ). God is able to care for and watch over each one every minute. We can affirm this and know that Christ, God’s message of love to man, is on the scene solving, caring, adjusting.
Material sense would impress us with big, showy problems or lots of small ones, but spiritual sense loves good and recognizes it without distraction. Spiritual sense brings humble peace and is universally applicable. With these ideas in thought, I knew I could nurture my spiritual sense until the material sense of things faded.
One day last December, a couple of months after I began praying with this idea, I finished studying the Christian Science Bible Lesson and went into the kitchen to make breakfast. My daughter was at the dining room table, doing her college homework. As I was stepping into the other room, she said she had seen a hawk drowning a woodpecker. I paused, unable to continue through the doorway. My prayers about the innocent wouldn’t let me proceed until I rejected the thought that an innocent could suffer or die. I said to my daughter, “We should affirm that the innocent can’t be victims or suffer.” I elaborated by telling her that we needed to look the material evidence in the face and deny it. This is how all healing happens: we reject material evidence of sickness, suffering, lack. By affirming the spiritual truth, we clear out the material sense testimony to the contrary. We don’t have to see the end of all evil to reject one example.
Then I continued with my work and finished making breakfast. Some time later, my daughter told me that she had rescued the woodpecker, a sapsucker, because of its cries for help. She had heard a screaming sound outside the sliding glass door behind her. When she opened the door, the Cooper’s hawk flew away with the woodpecker in its talons. She pursued it, but when she couldn’t see or hear anything, she thought the woodpecker was dead.
We don’t have to see the end of all evil to reject one example.
She had almost given up when she heard one short, screechy cry. The hawk was behind some bushes standing in the stream holding the woodpecker. As she approached, the hawk flew off again, but with perseverance, she soon found and rescued the wet, cold, and wounded woodpecker from a clump of ferns. She immediately put it into her fleece-lined coat, which it grabbed into tightly and hid. Several hours later, the woodpecker, still in my daughter’s coat while she did her homework, started to wiggle. We made sure it was ready to be released and then let it go.
I was grateful for this inspiring “private miracle,” this encouraging witnessing of good and blessing that followed my spiritual conviction. Because of my prayers for the innocent, I had been ready to look error in the face and deny it with conviction, and I got to see the unreality of the error through witnessing the woodpecker’s survival. I also appreciated that the woodpecker was aided because of its persistent cry and its not giving up. It seemed completely natural that my daughter spontaneously expressed love for all God’s creatures. I am grateful for this step in my continued praying for the innocent and knowing they cannot suffer.
That evening in the freezing cold, when we were feeding our animals, we couldn’t find one of our pullets. My husband suggested that the hawk got it. I knew I shouldn’t accept this suggestion. God’s goodness was there for each creature, even this young chicken. No innocent could suffer. The pullet wasn’t at the morning feeding either, but that afternoon, my daughter found it, snuggled it, and fed it.
Later that week, in the chapter of Science and Health titled “The Apocalypse,” concerning the great dragon “which deceiveth the whole world” (p. 567 ; see Revelation 12:9 ) being cast out, I read: “Divine Science shows how the Lamb slays the wolf. Innocence and Truth overcome guilt and error. Ever since the foundation of the world, ever since error would establish material belief, evil has tried to slay the Lamb; but Science is able to destroy this lie, called evil” (pp. 567–568 ).
The innocent can’t suffer. They cannot be taken or forced out of God’s care and governance. They are not victims of evil, and refuting this lie annihilates it and lets us triumph over it.
