Not impressed by fog or flu

When I first heard the news stories about avian flu, I prayed. I knew prayer would be effective because it healed me of flu this past year when my husband and I were visiting friends and relatives in Northern Ireland. One morning I felt as if all the symptoms of flu were developing. It had taken an effort to get up and out of bed; I was moving slowly. When I looked out of the window, I couldn’t see a thing.

And usually, the view from my window was of green fields sloping down the hill toward the sparkling sea and across the water to a suburb of Belfast. The flowers and bushes were all in bloom in vibrant yellow, red, and purple. Donkeys in the pasture added to the picture.

But this morning, a gray, soupy fog covered what I knew to be a beautiful scene. It was as if there were no sun, no sea, no flowers, no donkeys. And no sign of a city across the water. Just thick clouds everywhere.

I knew that Belfast and the landscape were still there. This gray fog hadn’t changed a thing. Everything was the same, unchanged, right there—I just couldn’t see it through the fog.

The fog reminded me of the first book of the Bible. In the second account of creation given in the book of Genesis we’re told that “a mist went up.” What follows is a description of man created from matter, designed to fail. This description distorts the account given in the first chapter of Genesis, which describes God’s spiritual creation, including man.

In that first chapter, everything God created is spiritual, and is therefore good. If something isn’t good, then God didn’t create it. And if God didn’t create it, then it isn’t real and can’t affect us.

Mary Baker Eddy makes this very clear in her discussion of these Bible chapters in her book Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures.

Through the study and application of this Science in Mrs. Eddy’s book, I’ve experienced all kinds of healing. And because it is a Science, I know the laws I’m thinking about and relying on are applicable and demonstrable for everyone.

So as I stared into the fog, I began to relate these spiritual facts about God and man to how I was feeling that morning. In those few moments, a glimmer of light in my consciousness pierced the grayness trying to cloud my sense of health.

What God saw in me, what He had created, had not been touched by this obscured view of spiritual creation. The flu did not come from God—it had nothing of Him or of Spirit. It was a foggy view of what was truly there. You could say “a mist went up.”

But I could remove that fog—lift it right out of the picture—by shining the light, the reality, of God’s creation on my thought. And as I did, I began to recognize my spiritual identity as the beloved child of God, never touched by this false view.

I remembered something my husband had shared with me before he left for the day. He, too, seemed challenged by flu-like symptoms.

He said, “What am I seeing? What am I believing? Am I impressed?” I knew he was speaking about the disease. “Am I seeing sickness? Am I believing it is a reality about me? Am I impressed by it?”

I knew that the answer to these questions had to be “no” because there is no reality outside God’s goodness.

At the same time I came to this awareness, unimpressed by the scene outside or the symptoms inside, the fog began to dissipate. The undiminished glory of the landscape came into view in all its beauty and grandeur. Nothing had been damaged or altered by the fog.

And that’s just how I felt—all the symptoms of the flu had dissipated. When my husband returned that evening, he, too, was well.

Science and Health explains, “Tumors, ulcers, tubercles, inflammation, pain, deformed joints, are waking dream-shadows, dark images of mortal thought, which flee before the light of Truth.”

To me, flu is also a “waking dream-shadow,” and it fled from my consciousness as I dwelled on the fact of my true nature as God’s idea. Everyone’s true nature is spiritual and perfect just as the first chapter of Genesis makes clear.

No matter how thick the fog, mental or physical, nothing can obscure our real nature as the good and pure child of God, made in His image and likeness. So if anything comes into our lives that’s not good, it’s not from God. And we can let it go. This is a healing law that protects from and counters the fears of flu, today and always.

Nothing can obscure your true identity:

Science and Health
502:9-14
515:21 Man
516:9-12
418:29

King James Bible
Gen. 2:6,7
Gen. 1:26