When my four children were ages two through seven, they played every day with their four friends who lived across the hall from us. The neighbor children all came down with chicken pox, and their father remarked that he was expecting that my children would soon catch it, too. 

But I understood from my study of Christian Science that contagion is not inevitable. Mary Baker Eddy writes in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, “We weep because others weep, we yawn because they yawn, and we have smallpox because others have it; but mortal mind, not matter, contains and carries the infection” (p. 153). 

This book explains that fear causes disease, and that the removal of fear is the first step in healing disease. So I was learning that because contagion is mental, I should not entertain in thought fear of anything I did not want to experience or witness in my family. 

I prayerfully affirmed that I was not afraid of chicken pox, but rather believed this statement from First John: “There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear” (4:18). I knew that the law of divine Love could cast out fear of contagion, and that I could trust that law. 

In praying for my children, I endeavored to follow this instruction on page 208 of Science and Health: “You embrace your body in your thought, and you should delineate upon it thoughts of health, not of sickness.” 

My older children were beginning to understand how to experience God’s healing power through their own prayers. We often read and discussed Bible stories together. This time we read the account of creation in the first chapter of Genesis. Several verses stood out: “God created man in his own image …. And God blessed them, and God said unto them … have dominion …. And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good” (verses 27, 28, and 31).

I reminded the children that man means everyone, including them, and that we are all, as God’s, Spirit’s, offspring, perfectly created in His image, and are therefore spiritual. We reasoned that everything God creates is very good, and because God creates only good, He couldn’t create chicken pox. Therefore, we don’t have to be afraid of it. 

I explained that dominion referred to the power God gave them over anything in their lives that challenges His goodness. However, they had to claim this dominion. If they left their jacket at school and later needed it, they would have to go to the school’s lost-and-found and claim it—and their dominion was the same. Even though there is no chicken pox in God’s kingdom, they needed to go to God in prayer and claim their dominion over it—not be afraid of it or think that it had power, because in truth disease has no reality or power. We also knew that their friends were God’s children, too, and had this same dominion. 

The result? Chicken pox had no sway over our household. None of my children caught the virus, and we were grateful to learn that their friends recovered from it more quickly than is usually the case. At the same time, a serenity pervaded our home that often accompanies a healing. Why? Because learning more about God’s love and protective power brings peace to mind as well as body. 

Carol Coykendall Raner
Forest Ranch, California, US