We were having exceptionally high winds that day. As I was leaving my house, I noticed that a neighbor’s garbage bin had been blown into the middle of the alley, making the alley impassable. I went to remove it, but as I did, the wind flipped the bin cover up. It hit me in the head and knocked me down along with the bin. Immediately, a neighbor was there helping me up and righting the bin. I had a painful lump on my head as well as other painful areas and some bleeding. I called a Christian Science practitioner to pray with me for healing.

After our conversation, I remembered a phrase from Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy: “Not guilty.” It’s included in an allegory that illustrates how the laws of God heal the sick (see pp. 430–442). In the story, after helping a sick friend, a man then becomes ill himself. He is on trial for his life, and his defense at the trial is that our true identity is subject only to the laws of God. Under God’s rule of law, doing what is just and right can result only in good. God’s law is supreme and therefore is a protection from any supposed laws that would impose disease or injury. The final verdict at the trial is that the man—who represents the true, spiritual identity of each of us—is innocent of breaking physical laws “because there are no such laws” and is set free.

I felt comforted to know that I was innocent and couldn’t be harmed. I had been, at every moment of the event, safe under the law of God while loving my neighbor (see Galatians 5:14). I wasn’t subject to supposed laws regarding mistakes or accidents, so I couldn’t be hurt. Instead, this was what was true about me: “Every law of matter or the body, supposed to govern man, is rendered null and void by the law of Life, God” (Science and Health, pp. 380–381).