When my sister-in-law picked me up at the train station for a visit with my brother’s family, she mentioned that she had only just recovered from a 24-hour stomach virus. And on the way home, we stopped by the school to pick up my niece, who was feeling similarly unwell. We made my niece comfy on the sofa in the den as the two of them discussed the symptoms, the amount of time predicted for this illness to run its course, and the potential effect on my niece’s participation in the next day’s activities.

My brother and his family are not Christian Scientists, and my sister-in-law was very worried about the possibility of my coming down with the same bug. As I assured her that I was not concerned, I was doing my best to mentally reverse the predictions with what I knew to be true about the goodness of God’s creation—that God did not create disease and that disease has no ability to even exist, let alone jump around from one “host” to another. 

That night, as we were all going off to bed, it became clear that my brother was now beginning to have symptoms, and everyone was even more concerned that this would affect me as well.